The main legal point established in the judgment is the binding nature of a decree against the head of an illam or tarwad on the junior members, the representation of beneficiaries in property suits, and the necessity to specify the names of all parties in the plaint.

Innes, J.

1. The appeal is concerned only with the lands Nos. 1 and 2. As to these, the plaintiff claimed them as having been purchased by his illam in 1852. He said that the illam was in possession till 1878, when he was dispossessed in execution of the decree in Original Suit 656 of 1876, a suit against his elder brother, to which he was not a party.

2. The District Munsif decreed as to portions of these numbers for plaintiff. On appeal to the District Court, that Court held that plaintiff was bound by the decree in Suit 653 of 1876 against his elder brother, and dismissed plaintiffs suit.

3. On appeal to the High Court, that Court (KERNAN and Forbes, JJ. held that plaintiff was not bound by that former decree, as he was no party to it, and remanded the suit for re-trial.

4. The District Munsif on re-trial has dismissed plaintiffs suit as to Nos. 1 and 2. On appeal, the District Judge has found that the former decision in the suit of 1876 was wrong on the merits, and has held plaintiff entitled to recover the two plots Nos. 1 and 2. He finds that they were in fact sold by defendants illam to plaintiffs illam in 1852. He takes occasion, however, in his judgment to point out to the High Court that the Judges must have been misinformed as to the position of the parties. He says:

A Nambudri illam is, with certain exceptions, governed by the same customary law as a Nayar tarwad. Descent is in the male, not in the female, line, but the male members are not, in the ordinary sense of the word, co-parceners. The absolute control of the family affairs is vested in the senior male member, who represents the family, and, as was pointed out in Nambiatan Nambudri v. Nmnbiatan Nambudri 2 M.H.C.R. 110, should he delegate the powers of management to a junior member, he may at any time resume them. The junior members have a right to maintenance in the family house, but they have no right to partition. The Vakil for the plaintiff could not dispute the proposition that, in the absence of fraud or collusion, a decree against the head of an illam or tarwad is binding against the junior members. Such, as far as I know, has been the law of Malabar unchallenged. I myself have never doubted that such was the law, and, in a recent case from Tellieherry, in which the parties were Nambudris, a Division Bench of the High Court has expressly decided the point. For the purposes of the present appeal I must, however, assume that plaintiff is not bound by the decree in Original Suit 656 of 1876.

5. He heard the appeal, therefore, on the footing that he was bound to act according to the views he assumed to have been expressed by the High Court, though he considered those views erroneous. In appeal to this Court, we have to determine whether by the former decree the question was res judicata, as that contention is again maintained, and, as it appears, the Court, in remanding the case for re-trial, was under some misunderstanding as to the status of the family, having been led to suppose that the plaintiff was in the position of an ordinary Hindu co-parcener. The views of the District Judge, who has had great experience in Malabar, are entitled, no doubt, to great respect. But I am unable to agree in the proposition that, in the absence of fraud or collusion, a decree against the head of an illam or tarwad is binding against the junior members. There has grown up for some years past a notion that not merely rights of property on the Western Coast and hereditary rights, but also rules of procedure in the Courts, are to be governed by Malabar law; and whereas, by the ordinary rules of procedure, a man is not held to be bound by a decree against another to which he was no party, in Malabar it has come to be regarded as the law that the status of a Karnavan is such that a decree against him, whether personally or as Karnavan, is ordinarily binding upon the rest of the members of the tarwad. When the objection is taken that this might lead to collusion and fraud t