SRI VASUDEVANDRA SARASWATHISWAMI Vs. SRIDHARA SIVARAMA MOORTHY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this suit the plaintiff claims a sum of Rs. 9,000 which he says the defendant must repay him in the following circumstances. In January, 1945, according to the plaintiff he came to Madras from Bezwada, which is his permanent residence in order to take part in a scheme in Insolvency whereby he was to be the guarantor. He says that he came to Madras with the sum of Rs. 9,000 but found, on arrival, that the scheme was not going to materialise. Happening to meet his son-in-law, the defendant, he decided, to send the money back to his son who lived in Tenali, the defendant representing to him that he was proceeding in a few days to Tenali on his own business. According to the plaint, the money was therefore handed to the defendant for the purpose of delivering it to the son in Tenali. The plaint says that the defendant failed to pay the money over and has retained it ever since. Hence this suit.

(2.) The defence denies the whole of the plaintiff's story except and in so far as the defendant admits receiving the Rs. 9,000 although on a slightly a different date : and he says that the money was paid to him on account of a larger sum of money due by the plaintiff to him as the result of a quasi agency which the plaintiff had performed on the defendant's behalf between the years 1929 and 1931. According to the defence, the plaintiff, who as indicated was the defendant's father-in-law, managed the defendant's affairs or some of them, and according to the defendant, has never to this day properly accounted for the same. The defence says that the plaintiff on a taking of accounts would be found to be liable to pay at least Rs. 12,000, if not, more thousand rupees. The defence therefore argues that accounts should be taken and/or that the plaintiff should pay the defendant a sum of Rs. 3,592-8-0, the balance, which he says is due to him.

(3.) The written statement is of great length and sets out in great detail numerous transactions regarding promissory notes, purchases of land and other things, with which the defendant says the plaintiff was involved on his behalf. This is a very substantial case therefore which is put up by the defence, and as stated, it relates to the period 1929 to 1931, and to transactions which took place hundreds of miles from Madras.