SESHAPPAYA Vs. VENKATRAMANA UPADYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In O.S. No. 77 of 1900 on the file of the District Munsif of Kundapur, Ganapayya Urala having been defeated on a claim petition arising out of an attachment made by the present plaintiff, sued the present plaintiff to establish title to the property attached. The suit was dismissed on a finding that the conveyance on which he founded his title, a sale by the owner Shesha Navada, was fraudulent and not intended to convey any interest. The decision was affirmed on appeal. The plaintiff now sues, alleging that after the dismissal of Ganapayya Urala's suit, he brought the attached property to sale and purchased it himself and obtained possession ; but was dispossessed by the 1 defendant, who set up a mulgeni tenure under Ganapayya Urala. This suit is, therefore, for recovery of the land, and it has been dismissed on the ground that the 1 defendant is entitled to possession as mulgenidar. It is found inter alia that the first defendant has remained in possession ever since the mulgeni tenure was created, and that the plaintiff's allegation that he obtained actual possession is not true.

(2.) The first question for decision in the second appeal is whether the first defendant is bound by the decision in the suit of 1900, in which it was held that Ganapayya Urala had no title. If he is so bound, the plaintiff's title cannot be questioned in this suit, and, apart from any question of dispossession, the plaintiff will be entitled to succeed on his title. The question is whether the 1 defendant is a person who claims under Ganapayya Urala within the meaning of Section 13 of the Civil P. C.. The ground of privity is stated by the learned author of Bigelow on Estoppel to be property and not personal relation (P. 142, Vth Edition) and this view is accepted by Mahmood J. in Sita Ram V/s. Amir Begam (1886) I.L.R 8 A. 324. The successor to or purchaser from a party becomes a privy only in respect of the interests and rights in property to which he has succeeded or which he has purchased.

(3.) And it is not to be supposed that the Civil Procedure Code contemplates the adjudication, between the parties to a suit, of interests or other rights, which are not theirs, and are not represented by them. Consequently, though the words under whom they or any of them claim in Section 13 of the Code of the Civil Procedure are wide, there seems to be no difficulty in the way of restricting them so as to bind the party to the subsequent suit by the decision in the former suit only in respect of interests represented by the party to the former suit at the time of suit. Other interests with which he had parted before the suit and which he had ceased to represent could not properly be the subject of adjudication in the suit.