HUBERT P JAMES Vs. GULAM HUSSEIN PAKSEEMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a judgment and decree of the High Court of Judicature at Bombay passed in its appellate jurisdiction dated 4 October 1945, in part reversing and in part confirming a decree of that Court passed in its ordinary original civil jurisdiction on 22 December, 1944.

(2.) The main question in this appeal is whether the appellant, who was the plaintiff in the suit, and the respondent, who was the defendant, were partners in a restaurant business, or whether the defendant was an employee of the plaintiff in the business entitled to a share of the profits as remuneration for his services. The appellant also claimed from the respondent a sum of over Rs. 8,000 alleged to be due in respect of food and other necessaries supplied to the respondent and his family from the business. This last claim failed in both the Courts in India and has not been raised before the Board. At the trial Bhagwati J. held that the defendant was an employee of the plaintiff ; the Appeal Court held that they were partners.

(3.) Bhagwati J. in a very long, but admirably clear, judgment discussed all the evidence in detail, and gave his reasons for regarding the only important oral evidence, namely that of the appellant, the respondent and of one B. D. Engineer called on behalf of the respondent, as unreliable. The evidence was also discussed in some detail in the Court of Appeal. Their Lordships will not again go through the evidence in detail, but will confine their judgment to the matters on which the Courts in India differed.