KADIRESAN CHETTIAR Vs. RAMANATHAN CHETTI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal reveals a history of delay and waste of time startling even in Indian litigation. The transactions under review took place as long ago as 1907 and 1908. The plaint was filed in January 1910 and preliminary proceedings were protracted by a series of appeals until October 1917. The real trial of the case did not begin until August 1919, though it is only fair to say that a great deal of those last two years was taken up in the proceedings on a commission issued to Rangoon. The judgment under appeal was delivered at the end of March 1920 and the appeal reaches us only now in February 1925, It reaches us in the form of a judgment divided into 130 numbered paragraphs covering 67 closely printed foolscap pages accompanied by a documentary record in three volumes covering 787 similar pages, When the case came before us, Mr. Grant, for the appellant, cited to us about 30 documents at most, and Mr. Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar for the respondents did not add more than a dozen in support of his argument. Making all allowances for the fact, that matters sometimes are legitimately gone into at the trial, which in appeal, can be sifted out because they have been shown to lead nowhere, I have no doubt, that in this, case the record has been loaded with an immense amount of irrelevant matter and that there has been a disastrous waste both of the time of the Courts and of the money of the litigants.

(2.) With all this mass of paper, the facts are comparatively simple and are not seriously in dispute. The parties are Nattukottai Chetties who stood one to the other in the relation of principal and agent, the plaintiff (respondent) being the principal. The agency was one of the familiar kind. The principal lived in Devakotta and sent out successive agents for the customary period of three years to transact business on his behalf in Rangoon. The plaintiff's agent from 1903 to 1906 was one Kulandaivelu Chetti and after his three years were up, he was succeeded by the 1 defendant. The terms of the 1 defendant's appointment are primarily contained in Ex. A, dated 27 November 1906, the salary chit executed by the 1st defendant to the plaintiff. I may mention in passing, that the last sentence but one of that document, which is unintelligible in the official translation, properly translated from the Tamil, should run as follows, "In transacting your business, I shall not prefer my relatives nor show favour to my friends." But it is common ground that besides Ex. A, we must have regard to the power of attorney originally executed in favour of Kulandaivelu by the plaintiff. Kulandaivelu executed a document Ex. 29 (a), dated 2 August, 1907, which clearly clothed the 1 defendant with all powers that Kulandaivelu had vested in him under his power of attorney Ex. 29; and that he had power to do under Ex. 29 itself.

(3.) It is perhaps not very clear on the documents, but it is conceded on behalf of the plaintiff, that Ex. 29 may be taken as defining the powers not only of Kulandaivelu but of his successor (1 defendant). I will return to the documents hereafter, when I come to consider the exact nature of the authority conferred upon the 1 defendant. It is sufficient for the present to say that it is of the kind common among Nattukottai Chetties. The business carried on by Nattukottai Chetties and their agents, in its general nature, is very familiar to the Courts of this Presidency. No doubt they are primarily money-lenders but it has been repeatedly held by this Court that they are also bankers. I take it that the distinction between the two classes is broadly this; a money-lender lends his own moneys, whereas a banker lends the moneys of others, viz., his customers. A Nattukottai Chetti combines both functions; he lends both his own moneys and his customers. He from time to time, also engages in various other financial activities, which need not be discussed here though traces of them appear in the record. The first test must be whether the powers which the defendant says that he was entitled to exercises come within the scope of Exs. A and 29 or whether they do not; the next, whether there was any special mandate, expressed or necessarily implied from the principal himself to expand, vary or restrict those general powers. But before embarking on that discussion, I had better set out the facts.