DHANUKDHARI PRASHAD PANDEY Vs. RAMADHIKARI MISSIR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal arises out of a suit for recovery of mesne profits. The suit was decreed against all the defendants with the direction that a commissioner should be appointed to take an account in order to ascertain the actual value of the profits to be awarded.

(2.) The suit was valued at Rs. 13,000; but the commissioner has found that the plaintiff is entitled to mesne profits of Rs. 16,011-5-0. This decision has been adopted by the Subordinate Judge who has by his final decree definitely directed, without any ambiguity, that the liability of all the defendants will be joint. The appellants preferred an appeal from the preliminary decree adopting a valuation calculated on the proportion winch the area held by them bore to the total area of which the plaintiff has been dispossessed. They have now preferred an appeal from the final decree valuing their appeals in the same way and paying ad valorem court-fee on the difference between this value and that of the appeal against the preliminary decree. The Taxing Officer has made a reference under the Court-fees Act on two grounds: first, of whether ad valorem court-fee is payable on an appeal of this kind; and secondly, of whether the value of the appeal for the purposes of court-fee is that of the entire decree.

(3.) On the question of whether the appeal should be valued at the value of the entire decree, or only at that which would have been its proportionate value if the learned Subordinate Judge had decided otherwise than he did, it appears to be clear, since by the decree these defendants are liable to pay mesne profits of Rupees 16,011, and not any smaller sum calculated on what might have been their liability if the decision had been otherwise, that the value of the appeal is the value of the whole decree. It has been definitely found that these defendants with the other defendants who were jointly liable entered into a conspiracy to dispossess the plaintiff, and that the liability of the defendants cannot be split up and apportioned. The value of this appeal is therefore Rupees 16,011-5-0; and if ad valorem court-fee is payable it must be calculated on that amount.