TATA INDUSTRIAL BANK LTD Vs. ABDUL HUSEIN HAKIMJI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These five suits are all summary suits, in four of which the Tata Industrial Bank are the plaintiffs and in the last of which the Eastern Bank are the plaintiffs. They are against various defendants, but the same point arises in each of them, and therefore they have been taken together. The same counsel appear for the plaintiffs and the defendants in each case. In each case there is a notice of motion to set aside the order made by Mr. Justice Crump in Chambers directing the summary suits to be beard on May 23, 1922, and also to set, aside the ex parte decree passed by myself on the hearing of the suit in the absence of any application for leave to defend, and, thirdly, asking in the alternative that the decree may be set aside under Order XXXVII, Rule 4, there being special circumstances and that the defendants may now be given leave to defend and appear.

(2.) Substantially the point in each case is this: whether within the meaning of Section 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, these Courts are closed for this class of business, viz., summary suits, during the April vacation. The material dates are as follows On April 20, 1922, the plaint was declared. On April 22, Mr. Justice Crump made his order directing the returnable date for the hearing of the suits to be May 23. He then, I am informed, directed the plaint to be returned to the Prothonotary for admission, it being unnecessary to obtain any special leave under Clause 12 of the Letters Patent. Accordingly the plaint was admitted on April 24. On May 4, the service of the summons was effected, and on May 25, the matter came before me as a summary suit and an ex parte decree was passed.

(3.) As regards the latter date, I should explain that the number of Short Causes fixed for May 23 was originally about 300. I directed these Short Causes to be put into two lists, the one for hearing on May 23 and the other for hearing on the 25th because the intervening date, viz., the 24th, was a public holiday, In the ordinary course many of these suits were either compromised or postponed or otherwise settled before the Prothonotary, and eventually about 120 Short Causes were left. Of these I heard 70 on May 23 and the remaining 50 I took on the 25th. The summary suits came after those Short Causes. If I remember rightly they were about 12 or 14 summary suits down for hearing that day. I may say at once that in numerous summary suits applications for leave to defend were made to me during the vacation, and in several of them I have passed ex parte decrees in which no application has so far been made to set the decrees aside on the ground of want of jurisdiction,