SHANKAR GANESH Vs. KESHEO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) MACNAIR , Offg. J.C. 1. The decision of the learned District Judge is to a great extent based on the opinion that a judgment not inter partes can be used as evidence in this case: he thinks that the fact of admitting former judgments in evidence generally means that they have the force of res judicata. In Ramdhan v. Purushottam A.I.R. 1926 Nag. 109, Wadegaonkar, A.J.C., considered the question whether the defendant had any bible bo certain property. In a previous suit, not inter partes, it had been held that the sale deed on which the defendant based his title was bogus and fraudulent and that under it the defendant had acquired no title. The learned Judge stated:

(2.) IT my opinion the correctness of this statement is at least doubtful. I need at present only refer to the discussion of the law in Woodroffe and Ameer All's Law of Evidence, 8th Edn., pp. 184 to 187, I cite two extracts: But the opinion given in favour of A in the first suit is not relevant to prove that the judgment should also be in his favour in the subsequent suit. and again The dissentient Judge thought that because the plaintiff produced this prior favourable decision it, therefore, rendered the case of the plaintiff in the subsequent suit more probable. No decision of the Privy Council has ever sanctioned such a use of a judgment.

(3.) THE question referred for the decision of the Full Bench is thus stated: Where a judgment was not in rem, nor relating to matters of public nature, nor between the parties to subsequent suit is the fact that the Court by that judgment decided a point in a particular way relevant for the purpose of the decision of the same point in the subsequent suit?