Summary
A plaintiff challenged rejection of her possession and injunction suit as barred by the Land Revenue Code. The same defendants had earlier secured rejection of her revenue proceedings by asserting that the title dispute lay beyond the revenue authority’s jurisdiction. The Court held that they could not adopt the opposite stand in the civil suit and leave her remediless. It restored the trial court’s refusal to reject the plaint and directed continuation on merits.
Issues
- Whether defendants who successfully objected to revenue jurisdiction could seek rejection of the subsequent civil suit by taking a contradictory jurisdictional stand.
Provisions considered
- Order VII Rule 11, Code of Civil Procedure, 1908Rejection of the plaint was unwarranted in the circumstances, given the defendants’ successful contrary stand in the earlier revenue proceedings. (¶ 4-5)
Held
- The defendants had persuaded the revenue authority that the dispute concerned title and could not be decided in the proceedings brought there. After that objection succeeded, they could not approbate and reprobate by asserting that the civil forum was also barred. (¶ 4)
- The High Court failed to account for the earlier rejection of revenue jurisdiction and the consequence that accepting the contrary civil-court objection would leave the plaintiff remediless. On these facts, the trial court correctly refused to reject the plaint. (¶ 4)
- Restoration concerned the maintainability of the suit at the rejection stage. The trial court was to proceed in accordance with law and decide the suit on its own merits. (¶ 5)
Result
Appeals allowed without costs. The High Court’s order rejecting the plaint was set aside, the trial court’s order restored, and the suit restored for further proceedings on merits.