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2009 Supreme(SC) 99

2009 (3) SCC 511
Supreme Court of India
THE HONOURABLE DR. JUSTICE ARIJIT PASAYAT & THE HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ASOK KUMAR GANGULY
State of Kerala & Others
Versus
Prabhavathy Thankamma & Others
CIVIL APPEAL NO. 460 OF 2009 (Arising out of SLP(C) No. 2215 of 2009) (CC No. 476) Decided On: 23-01-2009

Advocates Appeared:
For the Appellant(s):R. Satish, Advocate.
For the Respondents:…………………….

Headnote:A) Sales Tax Laws:- Actionable claims are not goods for the purpose of sales tax laws, though they are subject matter of ownership. (Para 4)

       B) Words and Phrases:- Lottery Ticket is defined to mean an acknowledgement of a conditional right to receive the prize money if the ticket is drawn. (Para 4)

       C) Sale of Goods Act, 1930, Section 2(7), 3 and 130:- Purchaser of lottery ticket entail transfer of an actionable claim and hence will be oods for the purpose of sales tax. (Para4)

Judgment :

Dr. Arijit Pasayat,J.

Heard learned counsel for the petitioner. Delay condoned.Leave granted.

In view of the decision of the Constitution Bench of this Court in Sunrise Associates vs. Govt. of NCT of Delhi & Ors reported in 2006 (5) SCC 603, we find no merit in this appeal which is accordingly dismissed. It need to be stated that this Court in the said case inter alia held as follows:

"We have noted earlier that all the statutory definitions of the word `goods in the State Sales Tax Laws have uniformly excluded, inter alia, actionable claims from the definition for the purpose of the Act. Were actionable claims etc., not otherwise includible in the definition of `goods there was no need for excluding them. In other words, actionable claims are `goods but not for the purpose of the Sales Tax Acts and but for this statutory exclusion, an actionable claim would be `goods or the subject matter of ownership. Consequently, an actionable claim is movable property and `goods in the wider sense of the term but a sale of an actionable claim would not be subject to the sales tax law.

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A lottery ticket has no value in itself. It is a mere piece of paper. Its value lies in the fact that it represents a chance or a right to a conditional benefit of winning a prize of a greater value than the consideration paid for the transfer of that chance. It is nothing more than a token or evidence of this right. The Court in H.Anraj, as we have seen, held that a lottery ticket is a slip of paper of memoranda evidencing the transfer of certain rights. We agree.

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The question is, what is this right which the ticket represents?

There can be no doubt that on purchasing a lottery ticket, the purchaser would have a claim to a conditional interest in the prize money which is not in the purchasers possession. The right would fall squarely within the definition of an actionable claim and would therefore be excluded from the definition of `goods under the Sale of Goods Act and the Sales tax statutes."

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