Justification of perfunctory order of dismissal of new trial application.

This is a Civil Revision Petition under section 115 of the Civil Procedure Code, against the decision of the Court of Small Causes at Madras, dismissing a New Trial Application, N. T.A. No. 77 of 1960, and confirming the judgment and decree in S.C.S. No. 3281 of 1959.

The facts giving rise to this petition are as follows: The plaintiff in S.C.S. No. 3281 of 1959, Court of Small Causes at Madras, sued to recover from the defendant the sum of Rs.1,200 alleged to have been paid by the plaintiff to the defendant on 15th December, 1958 in pursuance of an agreement to purchase the defendant’s house. The defendant was admittedly the owner of premises No. 14-B, Station View Road, Kodambakkam, and he agreed to sell that property to the plaintiff for a sum of Rs.11,600, and the agreement was embodied in a document, dated 15th December, 1958. The plaintiff alleged that she paid a sum of Rs.1,200 as advance under that agreement and that the advance amount was repayable to her, as the defendant did not sell the property as agreed to by him. The defendant admitted the receipt of the advance of Rs.1,200 but submitted that the advance was paid by the plaintiff’s husband and not by the plaintiff, that he sold the house to the plaintiff’s husband for Rs.11,500 and the advance of Rs.1,200 was adjusted towards the consideration of that sale. He denied liability to repay the amount to the plaintiff. There is no dispute that the defendant received the sum of Rs.1,200 under the terms of the agreement, dated 15th December,1958 and the real dispute between the parties was whether the sum so received was adjusted in the subsequent sale transaction between the defendant and the plaintiff’s husband, or did it remain unadjusted. The case of the plaintiff was that her husband paid another sum of Rs.1,200 to the defendant to fulfil his obligation under the purchase made by him. Several documents were marked and oral evidence also was recorded at the trial. Though the issue arising in the case was apparently simple, the facts, as emerged at the trial, were conflicting and were of a complex character. The learned Small Cause Judge, who tried this suit, reached the conclusion that P.W. 1, the plaintiff’s husband, paid a separate advance on 29th January, 1959 for the sale deed Exhibit P-7 in his favour and that the original advance received by the defendant from the plaintiff was liable to be repaid, and accordingly granted a decree in favour of the plaintiff. The defendant preferred a New Trial Application under section 38 of the Presidency Small Cause Courts Act, and two learned Judges of the Court of Small Causes dismissed the application in these brief words:

" Heard. There is no question of law. Dismissed."

The defendant questions the correctness and propriety of the said decision in the New Trial Application, in this Civil Revision Petition. The most striking feature of this impugned pronouncement is its extraordinary brevity, which arouses in the mind of the revising Court the suspicion that the decision is ill-considered and arbitrary. Bereft of narration of the pleadings in the case, discussion of the evidence adduced, and the reasons for the conclusion, the decision, I hesitate to call it a judgment, has all the look of an ipsi dixit without the quality of judicial persuasiveness. It does not satisfy the party who has lost the case, and, of course, cannot carry conviction even to the most fastidious revising Court rigidly applying section 115, Civil Procedure Code. However hard pressed for time the learned Judges of the Court of Small Causes may be, and however plain and uncomplicated the facts of the case may appear to them, it is not a proper discharge of duty to dispose of a New Trial Application by merely dismissing it. A judgment, withholding the reasons on which it is based, and silent regarding the contentions raised before the Court, is disappointing, unsatisfactory and improper.

The procedure in the Court of Small Causes, Madras, is no