RAJA OF RAMNAD Vs. SUNDARA PANDIYASAMI TEVAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from the decree of the High Court of Judicature at Madras, affirming, with a modification, the decree of the District Judge of Madura, who ordered that the second defendant, that is, the present appellant, should pay out of the income of the Ramnad zamindari to the third plaintiff, the present respondent, the sum of Rs. 24,126 10a. 8p. with interest, and should also pay future instalments from the date of the plaint at the rate of Rs. 700 a month, and gave that plaintiff the costs of the suit.

(2.) THE first question which the Board has to decide is upon the construction of a deed of compromise, which is the root of the title of the third plaintiff. That compromise passed between the ancestor of the appellant and the ancestor, though not the lineal ancestor, of the respondent, and by that compromise between two parties each claiming the impartible zamindari, the ancestor of the present appellant retained the zamindari subject to giving up one village and paying an annual sum of Rs. 700 per month to the ancestor of the present respondent. It has been contended that the effect of that compromise was to limit the payment of the Rs. 700 to the lineal heirs of the grantee, and that, as the present respondent is only a collateral heir and only represents, by virtue of the assignment under which he claimed, a nearer collateral heir of the grantee, he is not within the terms of the deed. Both Courts below have taken the opposite view, and their Lordships see no reason to differ from that view. The ground may be put quite shortly: It was a compromise dividing the estate - not dividing the estate equally by any means, but giving a share to the grantee of this annuity, and a larger share to the other party. The less successful party got a village and an annuity, the more successful party got all the rest of the property. There is every reason to suppose that the intention of the parties was that, just as one side was to keep the majority of the property for himself and his heirs, lineal or collateral, as the case might be, so A the other side was to have the village; and, in the same way, the annuity, for himself and his heirs, lineal or collateral, as the cast; might be. If the question of construction be determined with reference to the village, the sense of this view is even more marked. Therefore one of the grounds for the appeal fails.

(3.) A point was taken that the third plaintiff, claiming under an assignment from a nearer reversioner, had not made out his title to the assignment; that it was void for want of consideration; that it was obtained by fraud, or some similar objection. It is enough to say that their Lordships agree with the Courts below in saying that there is nothing in any of these points.