MANGAN LAL Vs. GIPRAILWAY COMPANY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff-appellant made over two parcels of goods to the G. I. P. Railway for despatch to Seoni. By mistake the goods were actually addressed to Samni, a station on the B. B. & C. I. Railway. The plaintiff brought two suits in the Court of Small Causes at Agra. The reliefs are -not very clearly stated in the plaint, tout they amount to a claim for damages for non-delivery calculated on the value of the goods despatched. Both suits were dismissed, the Court holding that the plaintiff was himself to blame for having written the address in Hindi and not in English with the result that the Booking Clerk made a mistake. It also held that the plaintiff ought to have joined the B. B. & C. I. Railway as defendants to the suits. The plaintiff then filed the suit out of which the present appeal arises in the Court of the Munsif of Agra. In it he joined together both the causes of action of his previous suits and so brought the valuation well above the 500 rupees limit. In this suit there was a prayer for three reliefs: (1) for delivery of the goods made over to the Railway Company, (2) for compensation for wrongfully withholding the goods, and (3) for the price of the goods in case the defendants were unable to deliver them.

(2.) The principal defence taken in the Munsif's Court was that the suit was res judicata. The Munsif held that it was not. On appeal, however, the Additional Subordinate Judge disagreed with the Munsif and dismissed the suit.

(3.) In this Court the only question discussed has been whether the suit has been rightly dismissed as res judicata. We have no doubt that it was. It has been contended that the Small Cause Court did not decide the point whether the plaintiff was entitled to have the goods themselves delivered to him or not, but this was merely because the plaintiff himself did not include in his plaint a prayer for that relief. Order II, Rule 2 of the Civil Procedure Code, clearly applies to the case. It was open to the plaintiff to ask for two reliefs on the same cause of action. He chose only to ask for one.