LANGOJU TAVUDU Vs. VEERINI VENKATARATNAM AND FIVE ORS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question that arises is, whether a party's initials are equivalent to his signature under Section 19 of the Limitation Act, which says that an acknowledgment of liability in respect of property or right should be made in writing, signed by the party against whom such property or right is claimed. On principle there seems to be no reason for holding that the word " signed" should be construed as meaning " signed in full ". The object of the Act, as I understand it, is to regard as sufficient what the writer intends to be equivalent to his signature, the form being immaterial so long as it verifies the acknowledgment. To ignore the substance and attach importance to the form, would be to defeat the plain intention of the Statute, which makes no distinction between " signing " and " signing in full ". The word initial , according to the Oxford Dictionary, means sign with initials . The question arose under the Indian Succession Act, which enacts that each of the witnesses to the will must sign it, whether a person who affixes his initials in place of his full signature, sufficiently complies with the Act. Wilkinson, J., sitting on the Original Side of the High Court and Collins, C.J., and Handley, on appeal from his judgment, held that a witness's initials amounted to a signature within the Act. Ammayee V/s. Yalumalai (1892) I.L.R. 15 Mad. 261. The learned Appellate Judges say: The Act does not provide that the attesting witnesses should sign in full and we know of no authority for the proposition that initials are not signature.

(2.) Then follows a sentence which no doubt is obiter but to which I attach great importance: On the contrary it has been held that they are equivalent lo a signature to an acknowledgment under the Limitation Act.

(3.) True, no authority is quoted, but that only shows that the matter was too firmly settled to be open to argument.