KAMOD SINGH Vs. KHEMKARAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE use of Latin words in legal matters is seldom more convenient than sticking to one or other of the three languages which are prescribed for use in the Courts of the Central Provinces and Berar, and then only slightly, but it gives rise to many inconveniences in many cases. Apart from that, it is hardly consistent to speak of this Court taking action of its own motion in moving it to do so by the submission of records with the suggestion that the taking of that action should be considered.

(2.) THE idea underlying the application made in the District Judge's Court is that the only pleader's fee that can be allowed as between party and party is the sum calculated to the last pie on the valuation of the suit according to the rates stated in the rules made under the Legal Practitioners Act. In most cases that was a wholly improper sum to allow under the old rules and it is so in many oases under the amended rule. The proper sum is what was actually paid or what might reasonably have been paid, whichever is less. The rules are a good general guide to the sum that might reasonably have been paid, hut no more.

(3.) THERE are several factors to be considered in fixing the pleader's fee, in addition to the valuation of the suit, and even that must be its real value, not the arbitrary or artificial valuation which is often sufficient for all other purposes In this case the dispute was over the right to separate possession of a half of 74.67 acres of land, and the pleader's fee allowed in this Court was Rs. 200. Before any amendment of the decree of the lower appellate Court can be possible it must be shown that the sum of Rs. 152-8-0 is more than was paid or might reasonably have been paid by the plaintiff to his pleader in that Court, not merely that the arithmetical process by which the Judge nominally (and his Reader actually) arrived at that sum was wrongly applied.