MAHOMEDBHAI HUSSEINBHAI Vs. ISMAIL HAJI HALIMBHAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants have obtained a decree against the respondents for accounts from 7th December 1901 to July 1902 in respect of a house owned jointly by Huseinbhai and Sulemanji their respective predecessors in interest.

(2.) The appellants have raised only one question, that is of limitation. They have contended in the first place that under Article 120 of the Limitation Act, the six years should be counted from July 1902, the date of the death of the accounting party Sulemanji; and that as the suit was brought within six years of that date, they are entitled to open up the whole account without any further bar of limitation. The appellants appear to have been encouraged to raise this contention owing to the somewhat elaborate, though in our opinion irrelevant, criticisms in the decided cases made by the learned Judge of the first appeal Court. The ultimate result of his discussion is what should have been clear to him from the beginning that there was no escape whatever from their obvious effect. We think there can be no doubt that the six years limitation prescribed by Article 120 of the Limitation Act must, as held in those cases, be calculated from each item of the account, so that only those items which are within six years of the date of suit can be brought into the account under this rule of limitation.

(3.) The appellants have, however, further contended that even if that be so, they are saved from the full bar of limitation by certain acknowledgments of Sulemanji alleged to have been made in May 1902. Those acknowledgments are said to be contained in two letters, the one addressed by Sulemanji to the first plaintiff, and the other addressed by Sulemanji to his own father. We have carefully considered those letters, but are unable to find in them any definite acknowledgment such as would justify us regarding, them as acknowledgments of liability to (sic) ing of Section 19 of (sic)