The main legal point established in the judgment is the flexibility of equity jurisprudence and the exceptional circumstances justifying invocation of equity principles, as influenced by the Indian Contract Act, relevant case laws, and the deceased's will establishing a fiduciary relationship.

1. A widow is obstructed in diverse ways, in her attempts at getting what is her legitimate due. All that she wanted was a settlement of accounts and recovery of the money that is legitimately due to her on such settlement. The trial court dismissed the suit, taking the view that the suit as framed is not maintainable. That view was reversed by the appellate court. The appellate court remanded the matter to the trial court, as in its opinion, none of the relevant matters had been considered by the trial court, "in its anxiety to find that the suit as framed is not maintainable." A permission was granted even to amend the plaint seeking recovery of a specific amount from the defendant.

2. The judgment of the appellate court is in challenge in the appeal.

3. There is no reason now, when the area is well illumined by decisions, for the ghost of old forms and rigid views to haunt the courts of law. As to how exceptional circumstances would justify invocation of equity principles has been clearly illustrated by the law laid down by the highest court in the land. Equity jurisprudence is flexible and meets the challenge of new situations without the law; for, as noted in the Current Legal Problems, 1952 Vol. 5, Page 1:

"New days may bring the people into new ways of life and give them new outlooks: and with new rules of law."

The Supreme Court further clarified that:

"Equity Is not penalty but justice and even where neither party is at fault, equitable considerations may shape the remedy our equitable jurisdiction is not hidebound by tradition and blinkered by precedent, though trammelled by judicially approved rules of conscience."

The new approach that the courts of law should have in such situations had been dealt with even earlier by the Supreme Court in Narandas v. Papammal, AIR 1967 SC 333. Even when there was no statutory right for the principal to sue the agent under S.213 of the Indian Contract Act, an equitable right arising under special circumstances enabling the agent to sue the principal was approvingly upheld in that decision. More than a decade prior to that decision, Iyengar J. of this Court, had encapsulated the basic principle in his decision in A.V. George And Co. Ltd. v. Peter Kuruvilla, 1956 KLT 465. After noting that the general rule is that the agent is not entitled to an account against his principal, the learned judge observed:

"But this rule is however subject to exceptions in cases in which the relation between the agent and the principal is of a fiduciary character or the transactions between the parties are so involved and complicated that the right of accounting will alone serve to administer complete justice and where the accounting sought is ancillary to the man purpose of the action."

4. It is unfortunate that these decisions and the principles underlying them, had been missed by the courts below. They have been recently recalled by a Bench decision of this Court in Kerala State Electricity Board v. Marshall Sons and Co., 1985 KLJ 930, to which I was a party. The only further thing then to find out is whether the factual situation in the present case is such as to bring the case within the exceptional circumstances as elucidated in the decisions referred to above.

5. For an effective consideration of that aspect of the case, a recapitulation of the bare facts may be helpful.

6. Ramalingam Pillai who had virtually settled in Trivandrum for over a long time, had a wife, the plaintiff here for whom he had much attachment. He had a friend, with whom he had extraordinary intimacy, the defendant in the case Ramalingam Pillai used to make available to the defendant, substantial amounts, from time to time. The defendant bad after his association with Ramalingam Pillai, prospered considerably. Whether the prosperity was due to the financial aid emanating from Ramalingam Pillai or whether the defendant's prosperity led to advances of funds to Ramalingam Pillai, it is not necessary at this juncture to decide.