The court must ascertain from the documents appended to or relied upon in the plaint whether the cause of action pleaded passes muster upon such interpretation.

SANJIB BANERJEE, J.

1. In this seemingly David and Goliath standoff, iron and steel baron Laxmi Niwas Mittal complains of being needlessly impleaded in a frivolous action and insists that he should be relieved of being detained till the trial by the plaint pertaining to the suit being rejected as against him. The appeal is directed against the dismissal of the first defendant's application in such regard.

2. The principal contention of the first defendant appellant is that only an illusion of a cause of action has been spun against him in the plaint; and, that a meaningful reading of the drudgery spread over nearly hundred pages, would not reveal any legal cause having been espoused against him. The appellant asserts that a 1996 oral agreement that he is alleged to have entered into with the second plaintiff brother-in-law is downright fanciful and imaginary; and, even if it is taken at face value, the subsequent agreements as pleaded in the plaint and as evident from the documents pertaining thereto would destroy the edifice of the claim against him. The appellant says that though a maze of allegations has been stitched to rope in the appellant, the plaint does not disclose the thinnest thread of any cause of action that can be pursued against the appellant.

3. At the outset it must be recorded that though the order impugned was pronounced on September 18, 2017, the very day that the commercial division in this court was inaugurated in the morning, the plaintiffs have unreservedly accepted that the appeal may be treated as one under the Letters Patent since the hearing on the appellant's demurrer had been concluded long prior to the commercial division starting in this court.

4. It may also be profitable to notice the story that is narrated in the plaint, not by setting it out in its entirety or by referring to stray lines or phrases from it out of context, but by reflecting on what the plaint seeks to say on a bare reading thereof. This is necessary in the light of the tests that have to be applied to assess the appeal, not the least of them being that the court of the first instance has already found a semblance of a cause of action against the appellant for the suit to progress to trial, even against the appellant.

5. The first plaintiff is a company. The second plaintiff is the husband of the third plaintiff and he is the brother of the appellant's wife. According to the plaint, after the appellant prospered in an iron and steel venture in Indonesia, the appellant slowly consolidated his position as the head of one of the world's largest conglomerates in the iron and steel business with interests panning out all over the world and across almost all continents. The plaint makes out that in the upswing of the appellant's remarkable journey to his present colossal status, he offered to the second plaintiff, in course of a meeting at Mumbai in 1996, that the second plaintiff and his wife be associated with the appellant in a company that would be set up in India for the purpose of routing all of the supplies for the appellant's global empire procured from India.

6. The plaint narrates that the second plaintiff took up the appellant's offer and an oral agreement was entered between the second plaintiff and the appellant, where the appellant represented the many companies worldwide that were controlled by him, to establish the plaintiff company with its registered office in Calcutta. The company was born with the second plaintiff and one Rajan Tandon as the first subscribers to the memorandum and articles of association of such company. The company and its business were always to be controlled by the appellant and certain terms as to profit-sharing and transfer of revenue were agreed to. The company was formed on the basis of the pre-incorporation agreement entered into between the second plaintiff and the appellant in 1996 and, immediately on its formation, the plaintiff company started receiving requests for quotations (R