ALAPATY RAMAMOORTHY Vs. POLISETTI SATYANARAYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE three appeals have been preferred respectively by the plaintiff, by the 1st defendant and defendants 2 and 4 and arise out of the plaintiff suit to recover Rs. 10,192 -9 -0 from the defendants, which has been decreed in part by the lower Court. The plaintiff is a registered firm doing business at Vijayawada under the name style 'Alapati Ramamurthy Gelli Krishnamurthy. The 1st defendant is a businessman at same place and defendants 2 to 4, who are hants residing at Guntur, Rajampet and Vijayawada respectively, are alleged in the plaint to be the 1st defendant's confederates.

(2.) IN the plaintiffs appeal, the dispute is confined to the first head of his claim and interest thereon till the date of the suit The plaintiffs contention is that the lower Court erred in giving credit to the payment of Rs. 3,300/ - made by the 1st defendant on 7 -4 -1946, because it was a payment not to the plaintiff firm but to a different firm known as 'Alapati Ramamurty Gelli Krishnamurty and Co. It is stated by the plaintiffs learned Counsel, without contradiction although no evidence was adduced on the point at the trial, that only five of the partners were common to the two firms and that the sixth partner of each is different.

(3.) WE see no reason to differ from these conclusions of the learned Subordinate Judge. Sri. A. Triyambakam, the learned Counsel for the plaintiff, does not suggest that the 1st defendant stood to gain anything by claiming that the payment was to the plaintiff instead of to the other firm. As the 1st defendant made no distinction between the two firms in his accounts, no intention can be imputed to him as regards the payment having been to the one firm or to the other. The plaintiff's clerk treated the payment as one made to the plaintiff by signing Ex. B -3. He undoubtedly knew that the two firms were different. The 1st defendant has now merely adopted the treatment by the plaintiff's clerk of the payment and it is not urged that there is any valid ground for refusing to allow him to correct the mistake in his ledger.