JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J. : — "All is well that ends well" and that way we have something happy to deliver in this short order. Even so, this litigation has lessons to teach and promises to keep and surely bears testimony to many a bane of the Indian litigative process.

2. The respondent, claiming to be a firm doing business in coal, brought a suit before the District Court for a few ambitious crores of rupees by way of damages against the petitioner herein, a public-sector corporation owned by the Central Government and engaged in mining coal and making it available to the community. This adventurous litigant, according to the Corporation, instituted the present suit for recovery of an astronomical sum hoping that by this strategy it could do business by abusing the process of the court, pressurise the State to settle with it and thus obtain a large profit through the speculative business of a suit. Its investment was nil because it took care to exaggerate the claim to such an unlimited figure that the court-fee was colossal enough to give it the advantage of being treated a pauper. While it is deplorable that some speculators gamble in litigation using the stratagem of pauperism,