NALLASIVAN PILLAI Vs. NRAMALINGAM PILLAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner Nallasivan Pillai presented an application under Section 13 of the Legal Practitioners Act XVIII of 1879 against a Second Grade Pleader, Ramalingam Pillai, to the District Court of Tinnevelly on the ground that the said Vakil whom he had engaged to conduct an execution was guilty of improper conduct in the discharge of his professional duty in the matter of that execution.

(2.) Section 13 relates to the power of the High Court to suspend a pleader or Mukhtear and has clearly no application. Taking it that Section 13 is a mistake for Section 14 even then a charge of unprofessional conduct in the discharge of professional duty made against a pleader can be enquired into only by the presiding officer of the. Court in which the pleader practises. The second Grade pleader, Ramalingam Pillai, having no right to practice in the District Court and the execution matter in which the alleged misconduct took place relating to a decree of the Tinnevelly Sub Court on its Small Cause side, the charge should not have been made to the District Court and could not be taken congnizance of or enquired into by the District Judge.

(3.) The District Judge, however, overlooked this point went elaborately into the matter, examined the petitioner Nallasivan Pillai on solemn affirmation as petitioner s witness, found his allegations against the Vakil to be wholly false and dismissed the petition on the 2nd September 1916. It goes without saying that the learned District Judge quite honestly believed himself to have jurisdiction to make that enquiry, neither the petitioner, Nallasivan Pillai, nor the second Grade Pleader, Ramalingam Pillai, (who was represented in the enquiry by another Vakil Aruinugam Pillai) having evidently brought to the notice of the District Judge that the District Judge had no jurisdiction to make such enquiry.