HARIHAR RAO Vs. SALU BAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE first defendant Salu Bai is the widow of one Ganpat Rao Brahmin, who apparently was commonly known as Munshi Bhat, and the plaintiff Harihar Rao is his third cousin and his nearest living agnate. In the present suit he claimed a declaration of the invalidity of the adoption which Salu Bai. purported to have made of Bhaskar Rao, the son of her own brother, who is the second defendant. On the plaint the Court-fee paid was Rs. 15, the sum then prescribed as a fixed fee under Clause (v) of Article 17 of Schedule II of the Court-fees Act in place of Rs. 10 by a temporary local amendment of the Act which has now expired. With the want of thought almost always shown in this matter the plaintiff described the value of the suit for the purposes of Court-fees as Rs. 15, which is absurd, though the more common and perhaps more absurd mistake is to take the fixed fee as an advalorem fee and say that the value of the suit is Rs. 150 because that is the sum of which Rs. 15 is 10 per cent.

(2.) FOR determination of jurisdiction the suit was valued at Rs. 5,000. That is apparently the value put by the plaintiff on the immovable property that passes from the first to the second defendant if the adoption is valid, not the value of his interest in it, that is his chance of getting it if the adoption is invalid, which is of course less. The defendants, as usual, raised the shortsighted plea that an ad valorem Court-fee had to be paid on the value of the property, which they asserted and endeavoured to prove was Rs. 15,000.

(3.) ANOTHER minor difficulty arises from the fact that the words of the proviso include moveable property. That is in practice usually, if not always, left out of consideration, as was done in this case, but the omission is clearly a breach of the rule as it stands.