The importance of including a prayer for accounts in partnership suits and the application of the limitation period in such cases.

Spencer, J.

1. The plaintiff and defend-ants Nos. 1 to 10 represent a firm which was started in Mandalay under the style of A. L. A. M. for doing money-lending business, which, for brevity may be referred to as the Mandalay firm In 1908, the 8th defendant in this suit brought a suit in the District Court of Mandalay for dissolution of the partner-ship of this firm and obtained a decree in which the proportionate shares of the partners were defined, seven in number and the plaintiff in the present suit was declared to be the owner of one share While the suit was pending and before the partnership was dissolved, a sum of Rs. 35,239 and odd was collected by one Arunachalla Chetty, who was the agent of the Mandalay firm, and this sum was deposited at interest with a firm consisting of defendants Nos. 1 to 7 and a stranger who is the 11th defendant in this suit which may be briefly referred to as the Rangoon firm. It may be seen that defendants Nos. 1 to 7 are common partners in both the Mandalay and Rangoon firms. The present suit was brought to recover 1/5th share of the money deposited with the Rangoon firm and the temporary Subordinate Judge of Sivaganga has given the plaintiff a decree accordingly. Defendants Nos. 3 and 4 appeal and they attack the correctness of the Subordinate Judges judgment upon two points: (a) that the suit as framed is not maintainable, and (6) that it is time-barred

2. The grounds for saying that the suit is not maintainable are stated in full in grounds Nos. 27 to 29 of the appeal memorandum. Although in the written statement of the 1st defendant the objection was simply raised that the suit could not be maintained without giving reasons, it appears from the appeal memorandum that the reasons are that the plaintiffs only remedy was to work out the claim as an item of asset in the winding up proceedings of the Mandalay firm under the decree of the District Court, which is Exhibit IV (a), and was confirmed on appeal to the Judicial Commissioner by his judgment Exhibit IV (c), Ground No. 28 is that "the money having been advanced as a whole and there having been admittedly no division or apportionment among the several partners, it was not competent for the plaintiff to maintain a suit for the recovery of his share alone," and ground No. 29 is that "the plaintiff cannot evade the equities arising out of the state of the account between himself and his partners of the Mandalay firm as a whole." It goes on to state that either a suit should have been brought on behalf of all the partners of the Mandalay firm for recovery of the entire loan or the plaintiff should have taken proper proceedings in execution of the decree of the Mandalay Court.

3. Now, on this point, there is no doubt that in England an action may, in the present state of the law, be brought in some cases by one firm against another, although they may have a common partner or partners, or on behalf of a firm to recover a debt due by one of the partners of that firm. See Lindley on Partnership (8th Edition), page 323. In India, Order XXX, Rule 9, of the Civil Procedure Code recognises the maintainability of suits between firms and one or more partners of such firms and also suits between firms having one or more partners in common. But a suit does not ordinarily lie if brought by one partner to recover money lent by him to a firm of which he is a member [see Rustomji v. Purshotamdas 25 B. 606 : 3 Bom. L.R. 227], the reason being that the advance made by one partner would be only one item in the partnership account; nor can one firm sue another when the sole partners of the first firm are partners along with others in the second firm and the claim is to recover as plaintiffs share certain advances made to the second firm before it ceased to do business--see Kathinath Kedari v. Ganesh Hari Narkar 26 B. 739 : 4 Bom. L.R. 525, the reason being that, without taking a general account, it would be impossible to do justice between the parties. It