RAMGOPAL Vs. DHANJI JADHAVJI BHATIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The respondent, who was the plaintiff in the suit, claimed against the legal representatives of the partners in a firm now dissolved, who are the present appellant?, to recover damages for breach of a contract to gin for him in their ginning factory raw cotton, which he contemplated buying and, when ginned, pressed and made up into bales, proposed to sell on the market in Bombay or elsewhere.

(2.) At the trial the Second Additional District Judge of Akola decided that the alleged contract was not proved and he dismissed the suit. Thereupon the plaintiff appealed to the Court of the Judicial Commissioner for the Central Provinces. Before the appeal came on to be heard, the Judge was removed from his office for judicial misconduct, not however connected with this case. Accordingly, in the language used by the members of the Judicial Commissioner's Court, In the lower Court the plaintiff's suit was dismissed. In this Court it was agreed that no reference should be made to the very long judgment of that Court, for reasons which need not be specified. In this Court it is not seriously contended for the respondents that the contracts alleged by the plaintiff was not duly made and was not a binding contract. That is anyhow very completely proved by the plaintiff's evidence.

(3.) In view of this passage it is difficult to see how their Lordships could review a finding of fact thus arrived at Without dealing with the technical effect which such an agreement might be deemed to have, it is plain that on a pure question of credibility of witnesses, their Lordships have no better competence to determine where the truth lay than the Appeal Court had, if so much, nor was the contention pressed at the bar that they ought to endeavour to do so.