Rajasthan High Court, Jaipur Bench
Ranawat and Mehta, JJ.
Mannalal - Appellant
Versus
Modi Ramchandra - Respondents
Civil Appeal No. 303 of Svt. 2006
Decided On : July 18, 1950
A suit cannot be held to be not maintainable simply on the ground that one of the defendants has been added as a party after the expiry of the period of limitation, unless it may be shown that without adding him a party to the suit no relief whatsoever can be claimed by the plaintiff even against the defendants already on record. (Para 6)
2. The facts of the case are that the plaintiff Modi Ramchandra brought a suit in the original court against Mannalal, Banarsidas, Kailashchandra and Dayanand for the dissolution of partnership and settlement of accounts of the firms named Dayanand Kailashchandra and Ramchandra Mannalal, which was resisted by the defendants inter alia on the ground that one Ram-dayal who was also a partner in the firm was not maintainable. The Munsif dismissed the suit on the ground that the plaintiff failed to prove that he had a share in the partnership and that he was not entitled to the reliefs claimed On an appeal being taken by the plaintiff to the court of the district Judge the suit was remanded for trial on merits. An appeal was preferred to the High Court of Alwar against the decision of the District Judge with the result that the order of the District Judge was upheld and certain directions were given to the trial court for the conduct of the proceedings. One of the directions was that in order to determine whether Ramdayal had any share in the partner ship business, he should be impleaded as a defendant.
3. When the case went back to the court of the Munsif Alwar, the plaintiff applied for impleading Ramdayal as one of the defendants, and the name of Ramdayal was brought on record, but the plaintiff discovered that Ramdayal had died and so he moved the court for impleading his sons as defendants. The petition of the plaintiff for impleading the sons of Ramdayal was filed six years after the date on which the defendants had refused to show the accounts of the partnership to the plaintiff. It was therefore held by the trial court that the suit was time barred by the provisions of the Limitation act. Consequently the suit of the plaintiff was dismissed. The plaintiff went in appeal to the court of the District Judge, Alwar, who held that the entire suit could not be dismissed as time-barred m rely on the ground that one of the defendants was impleaded after the expiry of the period of limitation. Two of the defendants have now come here in appeal on the ground that the suit should have been dismissed as time-barred.
4. It may be observed that the plaintiff has filed his suit of dissolution of partnership and for settlement of accounts relating to two separate firms, one of the firms is Ramchander Mana-lal in which Ramdayal was not a partner, and the other firm is of Dayanand Kailashchandra in which Ramdayal is said to have had a four-anna share. So far as the question of the dissolution of the firm of Ramchandra Mannalal is concerned, the suit could not have been dismissed on the ground that Ramdayal was not impleaded as one of the defendants. As the suit of the plaintiff is not maintainable on the ground that one of the defendants, who is said to be a partner of this firm, was not impleaded as a defendant before the expiry of the period of limitation. The trial court has placed reliance on A.I.R. 1933 Sind, 121, which is based on 14 Calcutta, P. 791. The District Judge did not follow the decision of 1933 Sind, 121, but relied on the decision in the case reported in A.I.R. 1937 Alld., 502. 14 Cal. 791, is a very old case. It was decided in the year 1887, and subsequently the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code were amended. That case is therefore not a good authority on this subject. O. 1, R. 9 of the Civil Procedure Code lays down that "no suit shall be defeated by reason of the misjoinder or non-joinder of parties, and the Court may in every suit deal with the matter in controversy so far as regards the rights and interests of the parties actually before it." It is therefor
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