The main legal point established in the judgment is the application of Article 89 of the Limitation Act and the requirement for specific pleading of facts related to the termination of the agency to determine the starting point of limitation.

Srinivasa Ayyangar, J.

1. The defendants in the suit from which this second appeal has arisen are appellants before us. The suit was instituted as an ordinary suit for an account of the management of certain properties belonging to the Zamorins estate by defendant as. agent.

2. The first question that has been argued by the learned vakil for the appellants was that the lower appellate Court was wrong in holding that the plaintiffs claim was not barred by the law of limitation. The argument with regard to both in the Court of first instance and in the appellate Court appears to have proceeded entirely on the question which was the appropriate article to be applied to the facts of this case, the defendants contending that the Article applicable was 90 and not 89. Article 90 was invoked because according to the third column of that article time would begin to run from the date on which the neglect or misconduct becomes known to the plaintiff, the allegation in this case being that the misconduct became known to the plaintiff even during the currency of the agency. So far as the question which is the proper article applicable is concerned, there can be no doubt at all here that the proper article applicable is Article 89. In fact this Court has in the case of Muthiah Chetty v. Alagappa Chetty [1914] 41 Mad. 1 decided that in circumstances very similar to the present case even when what is charged includes misappropriation the proper article to be applied is only Article 89. The expression "neglect or misconduct" appearing in the third column of Article 90 has special reference to what is termed negligence or misconduct of the agent in the conduct of the agency. The word "misconduct," therefore, in that article should not be construed as including everything that may in ordinary parlance be called misconduct. If the expression "misconduct" should be construed so generally, then of course any failure of duty on the part of the agent will amount to misconduct, a failure to render an account, a failure to pay over the money in his hands payable to the principal and so on. But the misconduct or negligence appearing in contradistinction to each other in the third column of that article must be construed technically as referring to what the principal charges as misconduct on the part of the agent in the business of the agency.

3. Further, Article 90 is undoubtedly the residuary article with regard to actions between principal and agent and Article 90 should be held to be applicable only if no other article can possibly be regarded as applying to the facts of the particular case. There is no reason whatever why Article 89 should not in terms be held applicable because the suit contemplated by that is by a principal against his agent for moveable property received by the latter and not accounted for. If the moveable property is not accounted for it does not matter what the reason for failure to account may be All that is necessary is the mere failure to account. Therefore if the special Article 89 could apply it follows that Article 90 should not be applied. There is also, as already stated direct authority for the position.

4. Then taking it that the proper article applicable is Article 89 the learned vakil for the appellants argued that even so the suit of the plaintiff should have been held to have been barred by the law of limitation because according to him .the agency terminated more than three years before the institution of the suit. The facts with regard to this construction are these. It is said that this defendant 1, who was acting as agent took leave on 1st January 1921 and that in or about July that year he applied for ex tension of the leave. He was refused the same; thereupon he tendered his resignation and resigned his office. The lower appellate Court has taken the date of resignation as the date of the termination of the agency. Though several interesting questions may arise with regard to whether a person in the posi