Real judgements, distilled
Court judgements broken down into the case type, how the decision played out, and the lesson worth remembering, with the full judgement available as a PDF.
Transfer Petition (Criminal) · 2026 INSC 1060
Where a marriage has irretrievably broken down and the parties reach a genuine, voluntary settlement, including on alimony, the Supreme Court can use its Article 142 powers to grant a mutual-consent divorce and close out all related litigation in one stroke, without requiring the usual statutory waiting period.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1061
In long-running, complex litigation involving apportioned government liabilities across states, the Supreme Court can use a mechanism like a retired-judge committee plus periodic compliance affidavits to bring genuine finality, including firm timelines, transparency obligations, and interest for delayed payment, rather than leaving matters open-ended.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1062
In an "as is where is" liquidation auction, a bidder who voluntarily accepts the auction terms cannot later resile from a forfeiture clause by citing regulatory caps or after-the-fact excuses for non-payment: courts will enforce the auction notice's own conditions.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8338-DB
Once someone is released from custody because the police failed to properly communicate the grounds of arrest, the police cannot simply re-arrest them by adding new charges: a specific, court-supervised procedure with senior-officer accountability must be followed, or the re-arrest itself becomes illegal.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8308
In economic-offence cases, bail can still be granted where the method used to quantify the alleged financial evasion is not adequately justified, and where the apprehension of re-offending is speculative rather than evidence-based.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8323
A parole claim must be backed by a genuine, verifiable application to the competent jail authority: courts will scrutinise irregularities like an incomplete address, an unexplained thumb mark, or reliance on a mere friend's affidavit rather than close family.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8337
Courts can grant short, strictly time-bound interim bail purely on humanitarian/compassionate grounds (such as caring for a seriously ill family member), even while a case remains pending trial and an earlier bail plea has failed.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8312
Courts will not repeatedly re-examine a bail plea already rejected on merits unless the applicant can point to a genuine change in circumstances since the earlier order.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8334
Under the no-fault compensation scheme for railway accidents, a valid ticket-holder injured while attempting to board a train, even carelessly, is generally entitled to compensation unless the railway can show a deliberate, conscious exposure to danger, not mere negligence.
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Legal Case Shots is a searchable database of Supreme Court of India judgments, each broken down into the case type, the court's key holding, and a practical lesson learnt, with the full judgment available as a PDF for citation or deeper reading.
MMTC, a government trading corporation, had a long-term contract with the US-based supplier H.J. Baker & Bros. Inc. to buy 60,000 metric tons of sulphur annually. After the Indian government "de-canalised" (deregulated) sulphur imports in 1992, MMTC stopped lifting the contracted sulphur, telling Baker only belatedly that it could import more cheaply directly from Gulf countries instead. Baker invoked arbitration, and a tribunal awarded it damages for two periods; on court challenge, the Delhi High Court upheld damages for the first half of 1992 but set aside the damages awarded for the later period (July-December 1992). Both MMTC and Baker separately appealed to the Supreme Court over the parts of the award that went against them.
The Court held that courts have very limited power to interfere with an arbitral award, and since MMTC had never raised the "failure to mitigate losses" argument before the arbitral tribunal itself, it could not raise it for the first time later, so the damages award for the first period (January-June 1992) was upheld. For the second, later period, however, the Court agreed with the High Court that damages under Section 73 of the Contract Act require proof of the actual market price of the goods on the date of the breach, and Baker had failed to produce its best available evidence (its own sale contracts and shipment records) to prove that market price, relying instead only on a few invoices and third-party price bulletins, so that portion of the award was correctly set aside. On interest, since neither party had specifically argued the point before the tribunal and there was no error amounting to "patent illegality," the tribunal's chosen interest rate was left undisturbed. Both parties' appeals were accordingly dismissed.
In a damages claim for breach of contract, a party must proactively produce its own best evidence (like actual sale contracts or shipment invoices) to prove the real market price at the time of breach: vague reliance on published price bulletins or a handful of selective invoices is not enough, and a failure to raise an argument before the arbitrator generally forecloses raising it later in court.
