Lord Russell of Killowen.:-

This is an appeal from a judgment and decree of the High Court at Calcutta in its civil appellate jurisdiction (dated 28th February 1941), which reversed a decree of the Court in its ordinary original civil jurisdiction (dated 8th August 1939) pronounced in an action in which the plaintiff (now the appellant) sued the four respondent coal companies to recover brokerage. The trial Judge (Lort-Williams J.) gave the plaintiff the relief which he sought, but on appeal the Chief Justice and McNair J. dismissed the action. The case is one of difficulty in that the rights of the parties depend upon happenings which took place many years ago, viz., at the end of the year 1919 and early in the year 1920, while the action was tried in the year 1939, and the truth has to be ascertained from the documents and the recollections of three witnesses, viz., the plaintiff, whose evidence was given in the witness-box before the trial Judge, and two witnesses for the defence whose evidence was taken on commission in England in the month of October 1938. A feature peculiar to the case is this: That while the trial Judge who saw the plaintiff, heard him give his evidence and w