POGULA HUSSAIN REDDY Vs. YASAGGARI VENKATA REDDY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal against an order of remand by the lower appellate Court sending back a suit for trial by the first Court. The plaintiffs, who are respondents 1 and 2 here, sued in 1920 to establish their right to, and to recover possession of, 2 3 share of the suit property. The property belonged to one Chinnayya who died without issue leading a widow. She sold the property to the 1 defendant's father in 1886 and died in 1920. The plaintiff's suit was filed after her death, the plaintiffs being the actual reversioners then. Their claim is met in limine by defendants 1 to 7, who now represent the alienee, on the plea of res judicata.

(2.) It is not disputed that the father of plaintiffs 1 and 2 at the time when he was a presumptive reversioner to the widow in 1898 filed O.S. No. 320 of 1898 against the widow and her alienee for a declaration that the alienation was not binding on the reversioners, and that he lost that suit. The first Court has held that, as that suit was a representative suit, the result of it will bind the plaintiffs and is an effectual bar to their getting a decree in this suit. The lower appellate Court held that a decree in a previous declaratory suit does not bind a reversioner when he has reached the status of an actual reversioner suing for possession unless he was himself an actual party to the declaratory suit. It therefore remanded the suit for hearing.

(3.) We think that the Lower Appellate Court's view of the Law as it now stands is wrong.