PRAGDAS BUDHSEN Vs. STAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN accordance with the authority of the case of Ex parte Yarlayadda Durga (1903) 27 Mad. 153, which has been cited to their Lordships, their Lordships are willing under the particular circumstances of this case to assist the High Court in Bombay by an expression of their opinion upon the question which appears to have been mooted before them. They desire, however, to add that it is no part of the functions of their Lordships' Board, generally speaking to interpret Orders in Council which have been already made unless they are brought before them in the ordinary way upon appeal. The present Board, of course, is only able to state the intention of the opinion delivered by them, and of the Order in Council that His Majesty was then pleased to pass thereupon by reading the language of the opinion and of the Order, and those of their Lordships who were parties to the judgment would hesitate to claim any specific recollection of the facts of the case.

(2.) IT does not appear to their Lordships that it was contemplated at the time, upon a question which was essentially one merely of calculating the amount of damages, that either party to a commercial dispute in Bombay would have proposed to call evidence long afterwards to contradict evidence which had been allowed to pass at the trial, when the facts were comparatively recent. This consideration and an admission of human frailty must be the Board's excuse for having failed to state more explicitly in the opinion that was arrived at what course they anticipated would be pursued in the Court of the trial judge. They may perhaps be allowed to say that they fail to see what substantial doubt could have arisen upon the question. The course which the trial judge had taken, the mode in which he assessed the damages and his decision - whatever the grounds may be that he gave for it - not to admit any fresh evidence of the value of the goods, appear to their Lordships to have been in entire accordance with what the Board contemplated would be done upon the question which it was necessary to remit to the Indian Court because their Lordships were not the proper tribunal to make calculation and the parties were unable to come to an agreement.