UTTAM CHAND SALIGRAM Vs. JEWA MAMOOJI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application to set aside an award made by the arbitrators appointed by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. In, this case the original contract, No. 59 B made on the 27th April of last year, was for sale of one lac of yards of Hessian cloth, the price was Rs. 30, delivery of one-half was to be made in May, and the other half in June. On that contract the petitioner was the seller, and the respondent the buyer. Delivery not having been made in May, and not being proposed to be made in June, two settlement contracts were entered into on the 31st May and 6th June, respectively. These are numbered 67B and 70B, and the price at which the same number of yards of the same goods was resold by the respondent to the petitioner, was Rs. 35.

(2.) Now, the first matter which the petitioner alleges as the reason for having this award set aside is that at the time the arbitration was called there was no dispute, and I am quite satisfied that it is an essential condition for the arbitrators jurisdiction that at the time the arbitration is demanded there shall be in existence a dispute; at all events unless the petitioner here has done something to submit to jurisdiction afterwards upon a dispute subsequently arising, that must be a condition of the validity of the award. Now the arbitration here was called or demanded on the 2nd August 1918, and the petitioner s case is that he admitted his liability. He says that the mere fact that he did not pay does not amount to a dispute. On that I have to examine how the facts stand. Under the settlement contracts the delivery was not overdue until after the 31st May and the 30th June, respectively, and the money difference was payable by the terms of those contracts by the 1st June and 1st July, respectively. On the 31st May and on the 26th June the respondent sent in bills for the correct amount, of course at that time including no claim for interest. Those bills and the petitioner s receipts therefor have been produced before me.

(3.) Now, these parties had various other dealings with each other upon entirely different contracts. Taking these other dealings together as a whole, there is a dispute on the evidence before me, a dispute as to which I cannot possibly now decide, whether they result or will result in a balance due from the petitioner to respondent or from respondent to petitioner. What is certain is that with the possible exception of a sum of Rs. 1,200 incidentally referred to in the letter of 15th August and as to which I am not given a scrap of information, it is not even alleged by the petitioner that any item, entering into the account upon which such balance would have to be struck, was due to him at or even about the 1st July 1918.