Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.:- A small cause involving a party claim of Rs. 1147.42 has sailed slowly into the SC by special leave. Both sides - The Bombay Port Trust, appellant, and the New Great Insurance Co. (a nationalised institution), the contesting respondent - agree before us that while there is only a short point of law in the case, a large section of the business community, as well as the port Trust, are affected by the ambiguity of the legal situation and an early pronouncement by this Court on the law of limitation applicable to consignee s actions for short delivery by the Port Trust is necessary. Is the period so brief as six months in terms of Section 87 of the Bombay Port Trust Act, 1879 (hereinafter called the Act), and if so, does time being to run within around a week of the landing of the goods (suggested by Section 61A) of the Act? Or, alternatively, does the longer spell allowed by the limitation Act avail the plaintiff and the terminus a quo start only when the owner has been finally refused delivery? Although the Court in this case is enquiring whether the little delay alleged legally disentitles the plaintiff to claim the value of the lost goods, it is a pathetic sidelight that the judicial process has limped along for 15 years to decide in this small, single-point commercial cause, whether a little over seven months to come to court was too late.

2. Pope Paul in opening the Judicial year of the second Roman Rota pontificated that delay in dispensing justice is in itself an act of injustice . Systematic slow motion in this area must claim the motion s immediate attention towards basic reformation of the traditional structure and procedure if the Indian Judicature is to sustain the litigative credibility of the community. Indeed, even about British Justice Lord Devlin s observations serve as warning for our Court system. "If our business methods were as antiquated as our legal methods, we would be a bankrupt country."

3. The problem that falls for resolution by this Court turns on the subtle semantics alternatively spun by counsel on both sides out of the words

"Any thing done, or purporting to have been done, in pursuance of this Act......after six months from the accrual of the cause of such suit....."

True to Anglo-Indian forensic tradition, a profusion of precedential erudition has been placed for our consideration in the able submission of the learned advocates on both sides. Intricacy and refinement have marked the arguments and meticulous judicial attention is necessitated to discover from the tangled skein of case law the pertinent principle that accords with the intendment of the statute, the language used, the common-sense and justice of the situation.

4. A relevant diary of facts and dates will help focus attention on the primary legal question. The first plaintiff became entitled to claim a consignment of 53 bundles of mild steel plates despatched by a Japanese exporter to be delivered at the Port of Bombay. The goods were discharged in the docks into the custody of the Bombay Port Trust (the defendant, and now the appellant) on September 12, 1959. The goods had been insured and the second plaintiff is the insurer, Within a week, that is, on September 19, 1959, delivery of the goods was applied for and was given but of only 52 bundles. A week thereafter, the first plaintiff demanded the missing bundle, but was tantalisingly put off from time to time by the defendant by letters of September 29, October 10, and December 4, 1959 assuring that a search was in progress to trace the goods. It is important at this stage to notice that the plaintiff s letter of September 26, 1959 sought "information regarding the whereabouts of the above bundle so as to enable us to clear the same at an early date". The broad implication is that at that time the first plaintiff had no idea where the missing bundle was - in the vessel or the port. It is not unreasonable to infer that he did not then know, for sure, whether t