LAXMANJI Vs. MT. GUTA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) 1. The plaintiffs' case was that on 29th April 1923, they took a lease of 201'90 acres of land for a year from the defendants -for Rs. 2,500 which they paid: they began ploughing the fields but after a short time, not more than a month, the defendants turned them out and two or three days later agreed to pay them damages for having cancelled the lease. The time spent over discovering what was the actual outturn of the fields would therefore have been wasted even if the absurd condition in the deed of lease about the measure of damages had been enforceable, according to the plaintiffs themselves, the contract of lease was rescinded by both parties and there was a new contract that the defendants should compensate them for having broken it, which of course they could have been compelled to do without any agreement. But in any case the measure of damages would be the same, the money paid by the plaintiffs to the defendants, the money spent by the plaintiffs in ploughing the fields, and interest on the whole from the dates on which the payment and expenditure were made, which in this case would be practically the same.

(2.) THE case is obviously false from beginning to end, as was held in the lower Court. That finding could be based on the almost ludicrously impossible account given by plaintiff 2, Walaji (P.W. 1) of the inspection of land he had never seen before on which he asks the Court to believe that he made up his mind to take a one-year lease for Rs. 2,500 of eleven fields in five different villages with an area of 200 acres and situated 42 miles from his home, he says it was all done within four hours. But even if the case be treated as in the main true, the claim for damages must still be dismissed because the plaintiffs have failed to prove that they suffered any. All they can have suffered can be measured by the money they paid for the lease and the money spent in ploughing the fields.

(3.) THE direct evidence of the existence of this debt is of the same kind as the rest of the evidence for the plaintiffs and the indirect evidence disproves it. There is a mistake in the sale-deed of 23rd May 1923 executed by Namdeo in favour of Nanaji. The difference between 8,000 and 2,500 is 5,500, and the amount paid in cash would have been Rs. 5,650, if there was ever any payment at all. But the amount paid in cash is shown as Rs. 5,500 and the balance of the debts as Rs. 5,650. The mistake is itself a strong indication that the recitals in the decree of fictions not of facts.