SHEO CHARAN DAS Vs. CHHAKOWRI SAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application by the defendant in a Small Cause Court suit which has been decreed against him and the application is presented on the ground that the suit should have been dismissed as barred by limitation.

(2.) The claim is based on a hand.note dated 11 March 1930 and the suit was instituted on 20 June 1936. In the interval between these dates, it is alleged that payments were made of Rs. 100 on 20 April 1930 and again of Rs. 25 on 18 April 1933. The second payment is still more than three years before the date of suit, and the point for decision is whether a new start to limitation is given under Section 19, Limitation Act, by an abortive agreement to refer the differences between the parties to arbitration on 1 January 1936.

(3.) The parties were at variance over another matter. There had been an All India Mutual Financing Corporation at Patna in which both the plaintiffs and the defendant had deposited money. When the corporation failed, the plaintiffs considered that the defendant was in some way liable for the loss they had suffered as having induced them to deposit the money in the concern. This claim appears to have been principal matter referred to arbitration. The recital of the reference-to arbitration alludes to a hand.note of 11 March 1930 and this is construed by the Subordinate Judge as an acknowledgment of liability relying on the decisions in Hukumat Singh V/s. Nenumal Rejhumal, AIR 1928 Bind 45 and in Kanshiram-Banshi Ram V/s. Arjan Das, AIR 1982 Lah 470. Neither of these cases is on all fours with the matter before us and the learned Subordinate Judge would have done well to bear in mind what was said by Maclean C.J. in Jogeshwar Roy v. Raj Narain Mitter (1904) 31 Cal 195 that: Unless the language of the document be identically the same, a decision upon the construction of one document is not of much assistance to the Court in construing another.