The court ruled that under the Arbitration Act, unilateral alterations by the creditor discharge the surety from liability, asserting that an arbitral award imposing liability despite a statutory discharge is legally unsustainable.

JUDGMENT :

HARISH VAIDYANATHAN SHANKAR, J.

1. With the consent of the parties, the present batch of twenty- eight appeals was heard together. After extensive and prolonged hearings conducted on various dates, these appeals are now being finally disposed of by way of this common judgment.

PROLOGUE

2. The present appeals have been preferred under Section 39 of the Arbitration Act, 1940 , [1940 Arb Act] , and all pertain to disputes involving Tommorrowland Ltd. These appeals arise from various judgments rendered by the learned Single Judge of this Court in suits instituted under Sections 14 and 17 of the 1940 Arb Act by Tommorrowland Ltd., seeking judgments and decrees in terms of distinct arbitral awards. By the respective Impugned Judgments, the learned Single Judge decreed the suits in favour of the plaintiff therein, namely Tommorrowland Ltd., while making certain modifications to the arbitral awards passed by the learned Arbitrator.

3. Each suit instituted by Tommorrowland Ltd. before the learned Single Judge arose from a distinct arbitral award and was adjudicated independently by separate judgments. Aggrieved by the modifications made by the learned Single Judge, Tommorrowland Ltd. has preferred twenty-four separate appeals, which form the subject matter of the present adjudication. In these appeals, the challenge is narrowly confined to the limited extent to which the learned Single Judge, while otherwise affirming the arbitral awards, modified the same, specifically with respect to the alteration of the quantum of damages and the disallowance and reduction of interest awarded by the learned Arbitrator.

4. In addition thereto, in respect of four of the said judgments, the respective opposite parties, namely the Underwriters, having felt aggrieved, have filed four separate appeals. These appeals are in the nature of cross-appeals corresponding to four out of the twenty-four appeals preferred by Tommorrowland Ltd.

5. For the sake of clarity and convenience, a consolidated chart indicating the appeals and the corresponding cross-appeals, wherever applicable, which are before us for adjudication, is set out hereinbelow:

6. Upon a careful consideration of the record, we find that all the arbitral awards in question were rendered by the same learned Arbitrator and are founded upon a substantially identical line of reasoning while granting relief in favour of Tommorrowland Ltd. The factual substratum of each dispute arises from almost identical agreements, involving common obligations, similar allegations of breach, and identical issues that culminated in reference to arbitration. 7. Likewise, while adjudicating the suits under Sections 14 and 17 of the 1940 Arb Act, the learned Single Judge, mutatis mutandis, adopted an identical reasoning in the Impugned Judgments, subject only to minor variations dictated by the facts of the individual awards. 8. In these circumstances, we propose to examine the present batch of appeals in a composite manner. We shall initially undertake a detailed examination of one appeal filed by Tommorrowland Ltd. and the corresponding appeal filed by the opposite party arising out of the same Impugned Judgment. Upon arriving at conclusions on the issues raised therein, the same reasoning would be applied to the remaining appeals, as far as permissible in law, as the broader factual background, legal issues, and grounds of challenge urged by the parties are substantially identical.

9. Notably, even during the course of oral submissions, the parties, in the connected matters, largely adopted the arguments advanced by the lead counsel, with only minor variations on certain residual aspects in a few appeals. We therefore consider it appropriate, and indeed judicially expedient, to hear and decide these appeals together, which would faci