The rejection of the plaint on the grounds mentioned in Order VII, Rule 11 does not preclude the plaintiff from presenting a fresh plaint, but the subject matter of the present suit was found to be res judicata based on the rejection of the plaint in the former suit.

Sadasiva Aiyar, J.

1. The plaintiffs are the appellants. The plaintiffs and the defendants were bound under a razinamah to pay in equal shares two kottahs of paddy as maintenance to the second defendant. In default the second defendant was entitled to take possession of a certain land which had then come to belong the plaintiffs alone though it had a still earlier period belonged to the plaintiffs and first defendant jointly. The plaintiffs, in order to protest their interest in the land which was in danger of being taken one of their possession if the maintenance due to the second defendant was not paid in fall, paid the whole of the maintenance due to the second defendant for the year 1914 and 1915 and then brought the suit (Original Suit No. 9 of 1916) for recovery of half of the amount they paid from the first defendant. That suit was decreed in he Court of first in-stance but the Appellate Court, on the 25th January 1917, pronounced the judgment, Exhibit, in which it held that the plaintiffs had to legal right to recover the one half from the first defendant because the razinma finally and solely determined the rights of the parties and the ravzinama did not contain a term giving the right to the plaintiffs to sue the defendant for contribution when the first defendant did not pay his half of the maintenance to the second defendant. Having pronounced such a judgment the decrial portion of that judgment right to have been worded as one dismissing the suit. But the Aprellafe court said in that portion of the judgment: The appeal is allowed and the plaint rejected as disclosing no cause of action," On gush a judgment either a decree dismissing the suit or a formal order rejecting the plaint (which order will have the force of a decree according to the definition of decree in Section 2(2), Civil Procedure Code) ought to have been and must be presumed to have been made. The plaintiffs had the right to prefer an appeal from sash a decree or such an order (it an order was passed and not a decree Instead of doing so, they presented the plaint in the present suit on the 11th April 1917 in which the principal prayer was the some demand for contribution from the first defendant of half the main tenant} aquanaut paid by the plaintiffs for the years 1914 and 1915 for the second defendant,

2. In fast, the subject matter of the two suits may be taken as identical. The lower Appellate Court has dismissed the suit as barred by res judicata, Mr. Muthiah Mudaliar for the plaintiffs (appellants) son-tends, on the strength of the language of Order VII, Rule 13, that the rejection of the plaint by the lower Appellate Court in the former suit does not preclude the plaintiffs, from bringing a fresh plaint in respect of the same cause of action and that implies that the present suit is not barred by res judicata. Order VII, Rule 13, is carefully worded and says that the rejection of the plaint on any of the grounds mentioned in Order VII, Rule 11 shall not of its own force preclude the plaintiff from presenting a fresh plaint." Order. VII, Rule 11, mentions four grounds on which the Court is bound to reject the plaint. Two of them, namely, Clauses (b) and (c) do not relate to the merits of the claim. Clause (a) it the case where the plaint does not disclose a cause of action and Clause (d) is where the suit appears from the statement in the plaint to be barred by any law Clause (d) evidently includes the case of a suit being barred by limitation. The prevailing practice is, if summons has been issued to the defendant and an issue has been settled on a question of limitation, to dismiss the suit if it is found to be barred by limitation and not merely to reject the plintiff The is rejected if it is found to be barred by limitation only in cases where the from itself discovers that it is barred by limitation before filing and registering it under Order IV, Rule 2. In such a face, the office brings the matter to the notice of the Judge, and if