RAMBHAU Vs. WAMAN RAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IT has been found, and it is beyond all possibility of doubt, that Bhaurao was the manager of the joint Hindu family consisting of himself and the appellants and that they knew he was dealing with the plaintiff and everybody else and was borrowing money from the plaintiffs in that capacity. Apart from the false allegation that this was not so, the pleas pub forward for them, are that there was no necessity for the borrowings, as the family had a sufficient income for its needs, and the plaintiff did not satisfy himself by proper enquiries that there was any such necessity.

(2.) IN a large number of such cases, if no actual necessity for borrowing is proved, the lender can have had no reason to believe in its existence unless he made enquiries from the borrower at or shortly before the time the loan was made. From this the idea has arisen, and is now very common, that it is necessary to prove in every such case, that the lender formally asked the borrower on each occasion whether the money was really required or not, and he replied that it was and explained how and why. Such an enquiry would ordinarily indicate-that there had been no proper enquiry at all. The confusion arises out of substituting "enquiry" for "reasons to believe." The matter in issue is not the enquiry but the belief based on information that could reasonably give rise to it, whether that information was obtained by direct or indirect enquiries or in any other way.

(3.) BUT even the question of the actual existence of the necessity does not arise. If a person borrows money for me, without my authority and even without my knowledge and though I have plenty of money of my own already, and I take the money from him and spend it myself, I am surely bound to repay it to the lender. That is made clear in more than one section of the Contract Act. Now it is beyond doubt that the whole of the money borrowed by Rambhau for the family was spent on it or by it, whether on necessities or luxuries or even debaucheries. That fact has been practically admitted all through. The only approach to a denial of it is to be found in a pleading in which the word "benefit" appears at the end, though the meaning of the whole plea is clearly that the family did not benefit by the borrowing, not that it did not receive the money. Even if it had been pleaded that the family did not receive the money, there is BO evidence to that effect, and the facts that the manager for a long time openly borrowed the money in its name in the same village, of which nearly a half is now admitted to have been spent on the family, is proof that it did.