KATTA THOLASINGAM CHETTY Vs. VEDACHELLA AIYAH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case a trustee was ordered to be removed by Mr. Justice Bakewell and an account was directed to be taken against him. That decision was confirmed on appeal and the case went to the learned Official Referee. But the learned Official Referee was of opinion that certain questions of fact involved should be decided by the Court itself, and the case, therefore, came before Mr. Justice Coutts Trotter sitting on the Original Side and we have now to deal with an appeal from his decision.

(2.) The question argued before us on appeal relates to item 11, certain house property to which the trust became entitled in the time of the former trustee, some ten years before the accession to the office of trustee of the defendant in this suit so that the defendant had two years in which he could have taken step for recovery of the property. It is stated by the learned Judge, and the case proceeds upon that basis, that neither the present defendant nor his predecessor did anything to recover the property and therefore it became lost to the trust by reason of the law of limitation, There is not much said about limitation in the judgment under appeal, but the learned Judge observed at the close of the judgment that it would be open to the defendant when the case went back to the Official Referee to show if he could that he was not accountable for the income but only for the corpus.

(3.) Before us it has been argued that on the facts stated and under the present law of limitation the remedy against the trustee is barred both as to the corpus and income, the suit having been instituted some nine years after the property was finally lost to the trust by the operation of the statute of limitation.