SATISH CHANDRA BANERJEE Vs. JIBAN KRISHNA GHOSH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Appellant instituted the present suit for a declaration that a business in castor oil at 1 Ratan Babu Road, Cossipore, was partnership business in which he and the Respondent Jiban Krishna Ghose had equal shares, and for accounts. Jiban's father Nilkanta had, it is the common case of both parties, a castor oil business, at the address mentioned above, of which he was the sole proprietor and that sometime before 1325 B.S. according to the Plaintiff and sometime before 1327 B.S. according to the Defendant it was converted into a partnership business with Nilkanta and one Surendra Kumar as partners. The Plaintiff's case is that some time after this partnership came to an end, Nilkanta approached the Plaintiff to join him in a new business as the previous one agreeing to pay an equal half share to him for his remuneration and services and the Plaintiff joined the said business as partner on the aforesaid terms. Nilkanta died in 1334 B.S., but the Plaintiff's case is, that the partnership business continued with himself and Nilkanta's son Jiban as equal partners, but that the castor oil business had been closed by mutual consent at about the beginning of 1346 B.S. and, dissolved. The Defendant pleaded that the Plaintiff was never a partner of the castor oil business, that the business exclusively belonged to the Defendant's father and thereafter to the Defendant and that the Defendant's father employed the Plaintiff "as a servant or assistant in his place to "do English correspondence.....", that Defendant's father used to give the Plaintiff a pay or remuneration of Rs. 50 in the beginning and that thereafter the said pay had been increased to Rs. 150 per month.

(2.) The trial court considered the oral testimony unreliable, but on consideration of a number of circumstances that were revealed by the documents, came to the conclusion that the Plaintiff was a partner of the business and gave a declaration "that the "Plaintiff was a working partner of the dispirited business and "was entitled to and liable for eight annas' share of the profit "and loss of the business". A preliminary decree for accounts was also passed.

(3.) The main circumstances on which the learned trial court appears to have based its conclusion were these: