Judgement

Appeal (No. 109 of 1926) from two decrees of the High Court (July 1, 1924) affirming decrees of the District Judge of Pegu.

The appellant brought two suits against several defendants claiming certain immovable properties under circumstances which are stated in the judgment of the Judicial Committee.

The suits having been dismissed, the plaintiff appealed to the High Court, but in one appeal failed to join the first defendant, and in the other the first two defendants, as respondents. At the hearing it-appeared that the appeals could not succeed unless the above defendants were on the record. The

Law Rep. 55 Ind. App. 7 ( 1927- 1928)

V. P. R. V. C hokalingam C hetty V. Seethai Acha 217

plaintiff thereupon applied to add them as respondents upon such terms as the Court might consider just. The time limited for appealing had then elapsed.

The learned judges (Baguley and Young JJ.) refused the application, and dismissed the appeals.

1927. July 28. Sir George Lowndes K.C. and M. R. Jardine, for the appellants, referred to Order xli., rr. 20, 33, Order i., r. 9, and s. 107 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

Dunne K.C. and E. B. Raikes, for the respondents, were not called upon.

Oct. 28. The judgment of their Lordships was delivered by

SIR JOHN WALLIS. The point for decision in these appeals from the High Court at Rangoon is a very short one, but there is one other matter dealt with by the trial judge to which their Lordships desire to refer in the first place—the transaction by which the plaintiff acquired the right to sue for these and other properties in Burma, now valued by him at three lakhs of rupees, from an Official Assignee in an insolvency in another Province for the trifling sum of Rs.580, which could be of no real advantage to the insolvent estate, having regard to the extent of the liabilities.

The lands in Burma, which are the subject of these two consolidated suits in the District Court of Pegu, were acquired by a joint Hindu family of Nattukottai Chetties, a money-lending community residing with their families in what is now the Ramnad District in the south-east of the Madras Presidency, and carrying on business by their agents in other parts of India, Burma, the Straits Settlements and elsewhere. The family was known in Burma as the K.P. firm, these being the distinctive initials prefixed to all their business signatures according to the practice of the community.

In 1908 K. P. Ramanathan Chetty, a young man who had recently succeeded his father as managing member of the family, finding that the Burma agency was in difficulties, got the other members of the joint family to join with him in executing a deed of trust by which they transferred the properties mentioned in the schedule to the deed to a trustee for the benefit of their creditors. The trustee was empowered, among other things, to sell the scheduled properties and invest purchasers with full proprietary rights therein, but was to act in certain matters with the consent of another person described in the deed as a “coadjutor.”

In 1911 the first defendants firm, who held two decrees against the K.P. firm for over Rs.72,000, were pressing for payment, and it was arranged that certain properties in the Pegu District, included in the trust deed, should be transferred to them in satisfaction of their claim. A deed of transfer was accordingly executed on December 1, 1911, in Burma by the duly authorized agents of the trustee under the deed, and K. P. Ramanathan, the managing member of the family.

Satisfaction was duly entered up, and the first defendant took and remained in possession without any question being raised by any one until some six years later the present plaintiff, V. P. R. V. Chokalingam Chetty, a member of the same community as the K.P. family, who was employed in Rangoon as the agent of another firm, obtained a transfer from the Bank of Bengal of a decree against the K.P. firm for Rs.90,000, in consideration, the District Judge states,