HANUMAN BOX AGARWALLA Vs. BIBHUTI PROSAD SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a second appeal from the judgment and decree of the learned Additional Sub-Judge, A. V. D. Dibrugarh, dated 31st July 1947, by which he set aside the judgment and decree of the trial Court which had decreed the plaintiff's suit for Rs. 466-8-0 with proportionate costs.

(2.) The facts material to the appeal are these: The defendant respondent rented the houses in suit from the plaintiff-appellant from 1st Oct. 1942 at a monthly rent of Rs. 15; at the date of the suit in 1946, there was a sum of Rs. 510 due to the appellant as rent from 1st October 1942 to 31st July 1945. The respondent denied that there was a relationship of landlord and tenant between the appellant and himself. His case was that in 1942, when the threat of Japanese invasion was extending to Assam, the appellant entered into negotiations with him in his capacity as manager of the Charali Tea Estate, for the sale of the houses for a sum of Rs. 775, and Gouri Dutta Agarwalla, acting as agent of the appellant, received a sum of Rule 75 from him; Agarwalla passed a receipt for the money on the appellant's behalf on 19th Aug. 1942. In pursuance of these negotiations, the Charali Tea Estate took possession of the land and the houses; the proper person, therefore, liable to be sued was the Charali Tea Estate, and not the respondent.

(3.) Upon the pleadings, the trial Court framed the following issues: