MOHANLAL MAGANLAL Vs. JIVANLAL AMRATLAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application under Section 25 of the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act. We are asked to hold in this case that the decree of the Small Cause Court of Ahmedabad is, to use the words of the section, not in accordance with law, and for that purpose we are invited to examine the facts of the ease in order to decide whether the appreciation of the evidence in the Court below is correct or incorrect. It has no doubt been laid down in this Court in Nathuram Shivnarayan v. Dhularam Hariram A.I.R. 1921 Bom. 407, that under Section 25 of the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act 9 of 1887 the High Court can interfere on questions of fact; such at least is the first paragraph of the head-note to that report. But if the judgment in that case be read, it seems to be a clear inference that what the learned Judges meant to decide was that the High Court would only interfere upon a question of fact where the decision was so perverse or so obviously incorrect in its nature as to amount to an error of law

(2.) It is extremely difficult to draw a hard and fast line in all the cases between points where the Court has obviously gone wrong upon a question of fact and those cases where some real point of law is involved. And far from saying that it can never be the case that the High Court will interfere upon a question of fact, I think that it is safe to say that the High Court will not interfere solely upon a question of fact where there is no obvious injustice involved or no obvious perversity in the decision upon a finding of fact. It is plain that the ease which was before the Court in Nathuram V/s. Dhularam A.I.R. 1921 Bom. 407, was of a very peculiar nature, and the point upon which the Subordinate Judge in that case declined to accept the evidence of account books was one which suggested immediately that he had so erroneously dealt with the evidence as to have been guilty of an error of law. It was held that certain corrections made by the plaintiff in his account must necessarily be regarded or treated as incorrect, because he had not obtained the defendant's initials or signature thereto, and upon that point alone, in the face of other and apparently convincing evidence the Subordinate Judge declined to decree the plaintiff's claim. It was in those circumstances that that decision was passed, and, in my opinion, speaking with all possible respect, it should be confined in its operation to cases, which, to some extent at least, resemble it.

(3.) There is nothing of the kind in the case before us. Should we accede to the prayer of the learned Counsel that the case is within the decision cited, we should be allowing an appeal upon a question of fact from case3 tried by the Small Cause Court. That was obviously never intended when Section 25 of the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act was enacted. We have heard all that can be urged upon the facts of the case, and after all is said and done, it merely comes to this: that though one Court may have taken one view, another Court may take a different view. It would be extremely difficult in" my judgment, sitting here, to say that the conclusion arrived at is obviously a wrong conclusion, and when that is said the case is removed from the category of cases to which alone Nathuram V/s. Dhularam A.I.R. 1921 Bom. 407 can be held to apply. That being so, I think this application should be dismissed with Costs. Madgavkar, J.