SORABJI DADABHAI Vs. BNRY CO LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decision of my learned brother Fazl Ali sitting in appeal from an appellate decree arising out of an action in which the plaintiff claimed damages or compensation for the loss of certain goods which were in transit on the defendant railway.

(2.) A number of questions arose in the Courts below, but the only matter which comes up for determination in this Court is the proper construction to be placed on Section 75, Railways Act. The goods which were carried on the defendant railway were six packages of ganja the weight of which, according to the declaration, was six maunds, but ultimately the packages proved to weigh eight maunds and twenty-four seers. No question arises now with regard to the matter, and as my learned brother Fazl Ali has pointed out, the defendant company admitted their liability to the extent of Rs. 85-5-0. During transit one of the packages was pilfered and some 11 seers 9 chattaks of ganja was extracted, and for that loss the plaintiff's claim was preferred for Rs. 541 which according to the plaintiff was the value of the goods lost. In pursuance of Section 75(1), Railways Act, the goods being in value more than Rs. 100, the plaintiff made a declaration that the value was Rs. 1,800. The Rs. 541 claimed in the action did not represent a proportionate value of Rs. 1,800 but a proportion of what they now state to be the true value: in other words, the plaintiff claimed to go behind that declaration of valuation and claimed to be entitled to prove the true value of the goods. In support of the claim for Rs. 541 reliance was placed upon the words of Sub-section (2) of the section which are: When any parcel or package of which the value has been declared under Sub-section (1) has been lost or destroyed or has deteriorated, the compensation recoverable in respect of such loss, destruction or deterioration shall not exceed the value so declared.

(3.) The appellant's case is in substance this: that the declared value merely limits the total amount of the claim, and that amount may be claimed either for the total amount of the consignment or a part, and therefore, he is at liberty to go behind the declaration as to value and to prove the real value for the whole or a portion, so long as the value for the whole or a portion is not in excess of the declared value. In my judgment there is no foundation for that argument. It is an argument which in my opinion ignores the grammatical meaning of the words "shall not exceed the value so declared" and at the same time entirely ignores the context of the section. The words "shall not exceed the value so declared" in my judgment implies that a claim may be less than the value declared. Again, when construing the words "shall not exceed the value so declared," the context is to be taken into consideration, the words of the context being "the compensation recoverable in respect of such loss, destruction or deterioration." It is impossible in my view to say that in the case of deterioration of a package or packages the whole amount so declared should be recovered as damages. On a plain construction of the section it seems to me that the argument of the plaintiff fails.