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Composite Appeal Against Common Judgment Maintainable: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has held that a composite appeal against a common judgment passed in multiple suits filed by the same plaintiff is maintainable. A bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice…
The Story in Brief
The Supreme Court has held that a composite appeal against a common judgment passed in multiple suits filed by the same plaintiff is maintainable. A bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar set aside a Karnataka High Court order that had interfered with the first appellate court's decision to entertain such an appeal. The Court said the requirement of separate memoranda of appeal was a curable defect, not a fatal one, especially since the appellant had filed certified copies of both decrees and paid court fees on two appeals.
The case involved two suits filed by the same plaintiff, one for declaring a sale deed void, the other for a perpetual injunction. After a common trial, both suits were dismissed by a common judgment. The plaintiff filed one composite appeal. The High Court had set aside the appellate court's ruling for lack of separate appeals, but the Supreme Court found that the composite appeal was rightly entertained. The matter now returns to the High Court for fresh adjudication on merits.
The Indian Opinion
This ruling is a welcome check on procedural hypertechnicality that can stifle substantive justice. Some lawyers and high courts have insisted on separate appeals for every decree even when the same plaintiff challenges a common judgment in related suits, forcing litigants into wasteful paperwork. The Supreme Court rightly saw that the defect, if any, was curable, as the composite appeal carried both decrees and full court fees. The test now is whether the Karnataka High Court will hear the second appeals on their merits without raising the same objection again.
Source: livelaw.in
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
