The court emphasized the importance of finality and the binding nature of declaratory decrees under Section 43 of the Specific Relief Act in adoption cases.

Varadachariar, J.

1. This is an appeal by the first defendant who seeks to defeat the claims of the plaintiffs as reversioners to the estate of one Sundararamiah, by setting himself up as the adopted son of Sundararamiah. Sundararamiah admittedly died on the 5th March, 1878, and it is not denied that he died of cholera. It is the appellants case that just before his death he orally authorised his wife to take a boy in adoption and that the first defendant who is the son of a cousin of Sundararamiah was accordingly adopted by the widow about a year after Sundararamiahs death.

2. This alleged adoption was the subject of adjudication in a suit for declaration instituted by the first plaintiff and his brothers so long ago as in 1883. (O.S. No. 877 of 1883.) In that litigation, the Court of first instance upheld the adoption; but, on appeal, the lower appellate Court held that the adoption was invalid as not authorised by Sundararamiah or consented to by the sapindas. This decision was confirmed in second appeal by this Court. The point for determination in this appeal is whether the decision in that litigation can operate as res judicata in the present litigation.

3. An argument seems to have been advanced before the lower Court that the present appellant who was a minor in 1883, was not properly represented in the former litigation, because his guardian ad litem was his natural father who, being himself one of the reversioners to Sundararamiahs estate, must be taken to have had an interest adverse to that of the minor. As pointed out by the lower Court, it is impossible to find that in the conduct of that litigation the appellants natural father had been guilty of any negligence or laches. Mr. Rajah Aiyar admits that according to the decision of a Full Bench of this Court, the question of adverse interest is one of fact dependent upon the circumstances of each case and in the absence of any basis for the suggestion that the guardian ad litem had in fact an adverse interest, there is no reason for presuming that his interest must have been adverse simply because he might have had a claim as one of six reversioners.

4. The only question pressed before us by Mr. Rajah Aiyar accordingly is that as the former suit was instituted in the Court of the District Munsif of Nellore, the decision is not that of a competent Court within the meaning of Section 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, because that Court could not have entertained the present suit by reason of its higher valuation. There are two answers to this argument either of which will suffice to dispose of the appeal against the appellant.

5. It has always been recognised in this Court that in determining the question of competency for the purpose of Section 11, Civil Procedure Code, the Court need not take into account any change in the valuation resulting from a mere rise in the market value of the properties involved. See Giriya Chettiar v. Sabapathy Mudaliar I.L.R (1905) 29 Mad. 65. If the properties concerned in the two suits are the same, the fact that fifty years ago they were worth only an amount, which would have brought a suit relating to them within the jurisdiction of a Munsifs Court is no reason, for holding a pronouncement of the Munsifs Court in respect of title thereto not final merely because according to. the present-day market value the same properties are worth more than the limit of the pecuniary jurisdiction of that Court. Applying this principle to the present case, it has not been shown that the properties covered by the two suits are not substantially the same. We were told that two or three extra items are comprised in the present suit and that one item included in the former suit does not find a place here because it has since been sold away in a revenue sale. Even making allowance for the value of the items now newly included in the suit, the present suit would have been within the jurisdiction of the District Munsifs Court if it had been instituted