PANNALAL NATHULAL MARWADI Vs. GANU BABAJI NHAVI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The first point urged in support of this appeal is that the learned Judge has reversed the judgment of the first Court, without giving an opportunity to the present appellant of adducing the evidence, which he did not adduce in that Court under the impression that the Subordinate Judge was satisfied with the evidence of the witnesses whom the appellant had already examined.

(2.) Now, to that argument the answer is given by the decision of this Court in Gulam v. Haji Badrudin (1888) I.L.R. 13 Bom.235.

(3.) This case is even stronger than that, because, in this case it is not the Court which stopped the present appellant from examining more witnesses than he had already examined, but it is the pleader of the appellant in the Court of first instance who thought that, having regard to the expression of opinion by the Subordinate Judge in the midst of the case, it was unnecessary for him to examine any more witnesses. But pleaders ought to remember that the Subordinate Judge s is not the final Court and that there are higher Courts of appeal that might take a view different from that of the Subordinate Judge. Therefore, pleaders and parties take the whole responsibility on their own shoulders, when they dispense with evidence; and even supposing that the party or the pleader was misled in the Court of first instance by the expression of opinion of the Judge of that Court in the midst of the case, it was the duty of the appellant s pleader to have brought that fact to the notice of the District Judge, that the error, if any, might be rectified. Therefore, we here, sitting in second appeal as a Court having only to correct errors of law of the Court below, cannot say that the District Judge has erred in law in not giving the appellant an opportunity to examine the witnesses, whose evidence was dispensed with because the appellant s pleader in the Court of first instance dispensed with them.