Rajasthan High Court
Modi, J.
Champalal - Appellant
Versus
Roopa - Respondents
Civil Regular Second Appeal No.178
Decided On : March 27, 1962
Where a seller is guilty of a failure to disclose a material defect in the property sold by him to the buyer and the former is aware of such defect and the latter is not or of which defect the latter could not be aware with ordinary care, then such an omission or failure on the part of the seller must be held to be fraudulent and where in such a case the buyer stands deprived of the possession of the property sold to him, then it is open to him, to bring a suit against the seller for return of the purchase money which the buyer has paid to the seller, and further he may also claim interest by way of damages on such purchase money. This remedy is independent of a suit for rescission of the sale-deed, which a buyer may also bring if he so chooses, and in such a case he may also sue for damages. It may be that it would be safer in the class of case like the present for the purchaser to sue for the rescission of the sale-deed also but it would be going too far to lay down as an absolute rule of law that a suit for return of the purchase money on breach of warranty of title would be incapable of being maintained in law without suing for the cancellation of the sale-beed. (Para 11)
2. The material facts out of which this appeal arises may be briefly stated as follows. There were money dealings between the plaintiffs and defendants Nos. 1 and 2 Roopa and Chatra (and their father Mukna) and in connection with these the former had filed two suits being Nos. 384 of 1950 and 328 of 1950 for the recovery of Rs. 3730/- and Rs. 3200/-respectively in the court of the Civil Judge Sojat and had filed a third suit for the recovery of Rs. 500/- in the court of the Munsiff Sojat. The plaintiffs case was that on Sawan Vadi 13 Smt. 2003, all the suits were compromised (vide Ex. 1) for a total sum of Rs. 5000/- and in part payment thereof these defendants had inter alia agreed to sell a house belonging to them, the boundaries whereof are mentioned in paragraph one of the plaint, for a sum of Rs. 4200/-. In view of this agreement, all the three suits mentioned above were withdrawn by the plaintiffs. It is further admitted by them that they had received repayment to the tune of Rs. 2300/- and the defendants respondent Nos. 1 and 2 had also executed a registered sale-deed with respect to the house in question in their favour on the 13th August, 1951. Their cases, however, was that they were not put in possession of this house, and they later discovered that a sale-deed with respect to this house had already been executed presumably by Mukna, father of the said defendants in favour of one Khuma on the 28th December, 1947, and the latter was in possession of it. The plaintiffs had also received two notices Exs. 5 and 6 on the 7th September, 1951, and 8th December, 1951, respectively from Khuma in which it, had been stated that the house in question had been purchased by him on the 25th December, 1947, and that he was in possession of the same, and therefore, the plaintiffs had no right to purchase the same from defendants Nos. 1 and 2. The plaintiffs also gave a notice Ex. 7 to defendants Nos. 3 to 8 the sureties on the 23rd May, 1953, in which they called upon the latter either to give possession or to pay the sum of Rs. 2700/- which had been adjusted in lieu of the price of the house in question. The sureties declined to pay. Consequently, the plaintiffs brought the present suit on the 20th January, 1954, against all the defendants for recovery of the sum of Rs. 2700/- as also a further sum of Rs. 800/- as damages.
3. Defendants Rawat, Bherusingh and Bhikamchand admitted the plaintiffs claim. Defendants Chimna and Magga respectively paid Rs. 1000/- and Rs. 200/- to the plaintiffs during the pendency of the suit. It is worthy of notice that defendant Chimna is the father-in- law of defendant No. 1 Roopa. Defendant No. 7, Sheoji allowed the suit to proceed ex parte against himself. Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 stoutly resisted the suit. Briefly put, their contentions were:—
(1) that the document Ex. 1 had been obtained from them by the plaintiffs under undue influence, to wit, if they did not execute it, the plaintiffs would see that they (defen-dants Nos. 1 and 2) were sent to civil jail;
(2) that one Lalchand had obtained a decree against their father Mukna and it was in order to defeat the execution of that decree that they had executed the sale-deed in favour of the plaintiffs with respect to the house in question and got it registered;
(3) that the plaintiffs knew that the house in question had already been sold by their father Mukna to Khuma and that they had obtained the sale-deed with respect to it with full knowledge
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