Sections 4 and 14 of the Limitation Act are mutually exclusive in their effect and application. Where a plaint is filed in a wrong court out of time, it cannot be brought within the period of limitation by applying S. 14.

JUDGMENT :- This second appeal raises a question of limitation. The suit is to take accounts of a dissolved partnership, the dissolution being on 06-10-1954. It is common ground that the last date for instituting such a suit was 7-10-1957. But 6-10-1957 and 7-10-1957 happened to be holidays. The plaint was therefore filed on 8-10-1957 but in the court of the District Munsif, Chidambaram, a wrong court. The plaint was pending in that court from that date to 18-11-1957, when the appellant got a return of it and filed the same on the same day in the court of the Subordinate Judge, Cuddalore, which is the proper court. The appellants claimed the benefit of Ss. 4 and 14 of the Limitation Act and contended that the suit was within time. The courts below declined to accept that view and concurred in dismissing the suit as out of time.

2. What is contended for the appellants is that if the time between 8-10-1957 and 18-11-1957, namely, 42 days is added on, under S. 14 of the Limitation Act, to the period of three years, the last date for filing the plaint would be 17-11-1957, and that day being a holiday, applying S. 4 to the case, the plaint filed on 18-11-1957 in the proper court would be in time. On the other hand, the argument for the respondent is that the appellants are not entitled to affix and prefix the benefit of S. 4 to the time to be excluded and added on to a calculation of the period of limitation under S. 14. In other words, it is pointed out that the plaint having been filed in the wrong court on 08-10-1957, to such a case S. 4 being inapplicable, it was out of time and that Section 14 cannot be called in aid to resurrect what was already barred. The solution to the problem thus posed turns up on the interpretation of Ss.4 and 14 of the Limitation Act.

3. Section 3 states that any suit instituted after the period of limitation prescribed therefore by the First Schedule should be dismissed although limitation has not been pleaded in defence. But where the period of limitation expires on a holiday, S. 4 enables the court to receive the plaint on the next working day as in time. The effect of S. 4 is merely to relieve the hardship arising out of the fact that the last day of limitation happens to be a holiday and extend the time for filing to the next working day. This provision does not pertain to the computation of the period of limitation. Section 14 is among the sections which bear on computation of the period of limitation. It deals with a case of a plaint filed in a wrong court, and provides for exclusion of the time taken there and adding the same to the period of limitation when it is filed in the proper court. The section states that, ''in computing the period of limitation prescribed for any suit, the time during which the plaintiff has been prosecuting with due diligence another civil proceeding, whether in a court of first instance or in a court of appeal, against the defendant should be excluded, where the proceeding is founded upon the same cause of action and is prosecuted in good faith in a court which from defect of jurisdiction, or other cause of a like nature, is unable to entertain it."

In effect, what the section enables is to add to the period of limitation prescribed, the period which the plaintiff who filed the plaint in the wrong court is entitled under its provisions to exclude. Reading Ss. 4 and 14 together, there is no indication in the language used in them that, where on the date the plaint is filed in a wrong court, it is out of time, S. 14 will be of any avail. The two sections appear to be mutually exclusive in their effect and application. The reference to "court" in S. 4 is the proper court having jurisdiction and unless the plaint is filed in the proper court, S. 4 will not be applicable to it. That what is meant in S. 4 is the proper court has been held by the Privy Council in Maqbul Ahmed v. Onkar Pratap Narain Singh, ILR 57 All 242 : AIR 1935 PC 85. If, therefore, the plaint wa