The central legal point established in the judgment is the right of a house owner to access the neighbor's land for repairing the outer side wall and whitewashing it, as provided by the Indian Easements Act, 1882.

ORDER :

Leave granted.

2. The appellants/defendants have questioned the correctness of the common impugned judgment and order dated 24.01.2011 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Madras in Second Appeal Nos. 479 and 480 of 2008 and M.P. No. 1 of 2008 wherein the High Court, after answering the following substantial questions of law disposed of the second appeals by granting certain reliefs:

"(i) Whether the trial Court was justified in rejecting the prayer of the defendants in the counter claim for having the projection of the roof of the defendants over the suit property which belong to the plaintiff and whether the first appellate court was justified in reversing the said finding relating to the aforesaid relief by ordering that such projection of the roof of the defendants could exist, so as to enable the rain water to fall into the suit property of the plaintiff without the backing of the law in support of the appellate Court's finding?

(ii) Whether the first appellate Court was right in reversing the finding of the trial Court, in the absence of any law supporting the findings of the appellate Court, which held that the defendants should have ingress and egress into the suit property of the plaintiff to whitewash and repair the wall of the defendants?

(iii) Whether there is any perversity or illegality in the judgments passed by both the Courts below?"

The High Court, recorded its reasons, placing reliance upon the judgment of the co-ordinate Bench of the Madras High Court in L. Damodaraswami Naidu v. S.T. Damodaraswami Naidu, reported in 1965 (II) M.L.J. 522 after referring to its earlier judgments in N. Kamalammal, wife of A. Manjia Pillai v. S. Chakravarthy, reported in 1965 (II) M.L.J. 241 and Bhagavatulu Subramanya Sastri v. Bhagavatula Lakshminarasimhan in which the Court observed as follows:

"In that case all that was held was that a house owner in order to repair his wall on his neighbour's side of the premises had the right to go to the other side of the wall on the land of his neighbour, the right being in the nature of a necessary easement."

3. Therefore, the second appeals were allowed setting aside the judgment and decree passed by the first appellate court insofar as the permanent injunction against the appellants/defendants restraining them, their men, agents or servants or any person in any way interfering with the peaceful possession and enjoyment of the suit property of the plaintiff. While granting the said relief, the learned single Judge of the High Court answered the substantial question Nos. (i) to (iii), referred to supra, in favour of the appellants. It has been clearly held that the grant of permanent injunction against the appellants/defendants, as stated supra, is in contravention of the judgment of the High Court in the case of L. Damodaraswami Naidu, referred to supra, and further extracted the relevant portion from the judgment in the case of N. Kamalammal, referred to supra, and the excerpts of the famous treaties and also the provisions of the Easement Act, which would unambiguously and unequivocally highlight and spotlight the fact that an owner of a particular house has a right to go into his neighbour's land for the purpose of repairing his outer side wall and also for whitewashing the same. Having stated so in the impugned judgment it has been held that the trial court was not right in holding that the suit property is the common property of both the plaintiff and the defendants and that was not the plea of the defendants themselves.

4. With the aforesaid reasons, question of No. (i) is answered holding that the trial court was justified in rejecting the prayer of the defendants in the counter claim for having the roof of the suit property, which belongs to the plaintiff and accordingly the first appellate court was wrong in reversing the finding of the trial court that the defendants should have ingress and egress to the suit property of the plaintiff to whitewash and repair the wall of