SAKRAPPA LINGAPPA HEBSUR Vs. SHIVAPPA BASAPPA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE appellant must succeed upon the point argued in second appeal as to the validity of the award. THE learned District Judge has found that there was no mala fides in the reference to the arbitration but he holds that the award made by the arbitrators does not bind the 1 respondent (plaintiff) because of the inequality of the benefit he derived from it and the erroneous view of the difficult point of Hindu Law which led the arbitrators to make the award. In other words, the learned Judge has declined to treat the award as valid, not because of the circumstances as they existed at its date, but as they transpired some years after it had been passed by the arbitrators. That, however, is not the test by which the validity of an award is to be determined. THE law applicable to this case is very clearly laid down by the Privy Council in Rajunder Narain Rae V/s. Bijai Govind Singh (1839) 2 M.I.A. 181, 249, where their Lordships say, dealing with the compromise there in dispute :- " To judge properly of the objection whether the compromise is valid or not, we must look at the circumstances as they stood at the time when the Solehnamah was executed. THE appellants are not entitled to avail themselves of all the light which subsequent investigation in the course of the suit has thrown upon their claim. If the nature or the extent of the rights of the respective parties could be considered as the fair subject of doubt at the date of the deed, and if. to avoid expense and delay by legal inquiry, they agreed to settle the contest by an amicable arrangement, such transaction is not to be disturbed on the ground of the inequality of benefit which either party may eventually have received from it." Having dealt with the question from that point of view, their Lordships go on to say;__" Under all these circumstances, the true amount of the relative rights of the litigant parties must be considered as having been doubtful, whether the law or the fact be regarded. And merely because the view which the arbitrators took of the law differs from that which a Court of law would take after a doubtful investigation of the rights of the parties, it cannot be said that the agreement when it was entered into was not a fair subject of compromise of disputed and doubtful rights." As the present case falls within the principle above quoted, the decree of the learned District Judge must be reversed and the suit dismissed with costs throughout upon the respondents.