PARTHASARATHI RAO Vs. TURLAPATI SUBBA RAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff in this case employed one Sobhanadri, father of the defendants, as his vakil in revenue suits, and he has now brought the present suit after Sobhanadri's death against defendants as legal representatives for an account of their father's agency. The learned Subordinate Judge has found that Sobhanadri acted as plaintiff's agent in each of the suits in which he appeared as vakil and has held that the plaintiff's claim is barred except in respect of suit the proceedings in which terminated less than three years before the suit.

(2.) The first point taken in appeal is that the Subordinate Judge is wrong in treating Sabhanadri's agency as being an agency in respect of each of the suits, and it is argued that he was a general agent for the plaintiff in respect of all revenue litigation. The order appointing him is Exhibit B (2) under which he was appointed by the plaintiff to conduct revenue suits in the District Munsif's Courts and before Revenue officers, but this document does not in itself constitute Sobhanadri as agent, for Sobhanadri could not appear as such agent without a vakalat in each suit. It was an appointment as standing vakil, and until a vakalat wa3 given to the vakil there was no agency distinctly constinuted. There was no contract which bound him to appear in each and every suit, nor was there any contract binding the plaintiff to appoint him in every suit, and it is in evidence that the plaintiff employed several other vakils for similar litigation. There can, therefore, be no question of general agency, but the agency was merely in respect of each individual suit. In this conduction I may refer to Saffron Waldon Second Benefit Building Society V/s. Raynir (1880) 14 Ch. D. 406, where it was sought to treat a solicitor who was appointed for trustees as agent of the trustees in receiving a notice and I would quote a passage at page 415. As Lord Justice James said, there is no such thing as a standing relation of a solicitor to a man. A. solicitor does not stand in a permanent relation to his client as a chaplain does to a nobleman or body having a chaplain. A man is a solicitor for another only when that other has occasion to employ him as such. That employment may be either to conduct a suit or to advise him about some matter in which legal advice is required; but there is no such general relationship as that of solicitor and client of a standing and permanent character upon all occasions and for all purposes

(3.) These remarks are in my opinion strictly applicable to the present case if we merely substitute the word "pleader" for "solicitor". The Subordinate Judge was therefore right in rejecting the plea that the agency was one and indivisible.