Seyyado Ibrahim Saibo Et Al. V. Jainambeebee Ammal Et Al.,

[IN THE PRIVY COUNCIL]

1939 Present: Viscount Sankey, Sir Lancelot Sanderson and Sir Philip Macdonell.

SEYYADO IBRAHIM SAIBO et al. v. JAINAMBEEBEE AMMAL et al. 

Partnership-Land purchased by partnership-Brought into partnership stock- Claim by heirs of partner-Onus on plaintiffs to prove that land is individual property.

Where land, purchased by a partnership in the name of the partners on account of the partnership and in the course of the partnership business and brought into the partnership stock, was claimed by the heirs of a deceased partner,-

Held, that the onus was on the plaintiffs to prove that the land was the private property of the individual partners.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Supreme Court.

D. N. Pritt, K.C. (with him R. K. Handoo), for the appellant.

Stephen Chapman, for the respondent.

Cur. adv. vult. 

November 30, 1939. SIR PHILIP MACDONELL-

This is an appeal from a judgment and decree of the Supreme Court of Ceylon setting aside a judgment and decree of the District Court of Nuwara Eliya and sending the case back to that District Court for an order of partition of certain land to be entered in an action wherein the respondents-plaintiffs in the action, sued the appellants-defendants in the action for a partition of that land.

The land, an extent of 2 acres 1 rood and 22 perches, situate within named boundaries at Nuwara Eliya in Ceylon, and known as " Fountain Store" or " Fountain House", was, on May 7, 1902, conveyed on a notarial deed P 3 to certain seven co-partners who had by notarial deed P 27 entered into a trading partnership on April 4, 1902. This, the first partnership of seven members, was succeeded on September 17, 1906, by a second partnership of six, five of them of the first partnership and one new member, and that on March 7, 1912, by a third partnership of nine, three members of the first partnership, the one brought into the second partnership, and five new ones. These three deeds of partnership P 27, P 28 and P 29, were, each of them, notarial and similar in their main provisions. Each deed recites the total capital of the firm, the amount brought in by each partner and his share of profits, provides a time limit for the duration of the partnership and that the death of a partner is not to dissolve it, appoints by name one or more of the partners to be " princi­pal partners" with express power to purchase and sell land for the partnership and to mortgage such land, and provides for the dissolution of the partnership and distribution of the assets, with an option to the principal partner or partners to take over the assets and continue the business. Each of the two latter partnership deeds P 28, P 29, refers by number and date to the deed preceding it, making the second partnership a successor to the first, and the third a successor to the second, and reciting that the accounts of the immediately preceding partnership have been gone into and agreed to. The second and third partnership deeds recite that the firm has landed proper

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