LAWS(PVC)-1927-7-95

BONOMALI GOPE Vs. FAKIR CHAND PAL

Decided On July 07, 1927
BONOMALI GOPE Appellant
V/S
FAKIR CHAND PAL Respondents

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application under Section 25, Provincial Small Causes Courts Act, to revise a decree passed by the learned Munsiff of the Small Cause Court at Munshigunge. The suit was brought to recover money lent upon interest which was repayable on demand. The money was lent on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th. 5 and 6 May 1923. On the 14 June 1926 the plaintiff filed the present suit. Prima facie his cause of action is time-barred. The learned Munsif, however, held that the claim was not time-barred, and decreed the suit in part.

(2.) Two points are taken by the learned vakil for the opposite party. The first is that the period between the 2 May, 1926 and 6 June 1926 should be deducted from the period of limitation upon the ground that during that period the petitioner was prosecuting in good faith a suit to recover the subject-matter of the present suit in the Union Court in Bihar which Court from defect of jurisdiction or through causes of a like nature was unable to entertain it. It was the common case of the petitioner and the opposite party that in law and in fact the Union Court of Bahar had jurisdiction to entertain the suit. But the learned vakil for the opposite party contended, having regard to orders passed by the Union Court, that the opposite party should be given the benefit of Section 14, Limitation Act, upon the ground that his failure to prosecute the suit in the Small Cause Court was due not to lack of diligence on his part but to the act of the Union Court. When the suit came on for the hearing before Union Court that Court passed the following order: It being desirable that there should be a proper trial conducted by persons versed <JGN>Page</JGN> 2 of 2 in law of the question regarding the document filed by the plaintiffs and regarding the question of the rate of interest, this Court orders that the suit be conducted in the proper Court.

(3.) I am unable to accede to this contention. The opposite party was guilty of considerable and unreasonable delay in taking steps to recover the debt due to him. He waited until the 2 May, 1926 (within two or three days of the expiration of the three years period of limitation) before he filed his suit in the Union Court. If he had filed his suit with due diligence in the Union Court there would be ample time after the Union Court had considered the matter for him to have presented his suit in the Court of Small Causes, within time. Further, I am not prepared to hold, having regard to what fell from the Union Court on the 6 June that the Court intended thereby to decline to entertain the suit or to decide that it had no jurisdiction or that through want of jurisdiction or any other cause of a like nature it was unable to entertain the suit.