PARBHOO DAYAL Vs. DWARKA PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a revision against a decree of a Small Cause Court at the instance of the plaintiff, who has lost his suit.

(2.) The facts that have been found by the Court below are these. The plaintiff and defendants, who are two in number, without the least semblance of right, removed the materials of a building in a certain village. The building belonged, in part to one Basityar Khan. Basityar Khan brought a suit, being No. 29 of 1927, against the present parties, to recover his own share of the value of the materials. That suit was decreed. The decree was executed against the plaintiff to the present litigation, namely, Parbhudayal and Parbhudayal satisfied that decree. Thereupon, Parbhudayal brought the suit, out of which this revision has arisen, to recover a certain sum of money said to be due to him from the defendants, by way of contribution.

(3.) The learned Judge of the Small Cause Court dismissed the suit. He held: The plaintiff had no interest or share in the beams which he had removed and that he was conscious of his wrongful act, and that as such this suit for contribution does not lie. 3. It has been argued before us that although the parties to the present suit were joint tortfeasors in the true sense of the expression, yet the plaintiff was entitled to succeed simply because there was a decree made in favour of Bastiyar Khan jointly against the parties to the present litigation. Reliance has been placed on a dictum of Lord Watson in Palmer V/s. Wick [1894] A.C. 318. His Lordship is reported to have said at page 332; But the case is very different whore the injured party's claim of damage is liquidated by a joint and several decree against all the delinquents. In that case - which is the present - the sum decreed is simply a civil debt, and the meaning which the law attaches to a decree constituting a debt in these terms is, that each debtor under the decree is liable in solidum to the pursuer and that inter se each is liable only prorata, or, in other words, for an equal share with the rest.