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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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.
Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) had engaged NCC Limited (NCCL) as contractor for civil and structural works at its Paradip Refinery Project. The contract took much longer to complete than scheduled, and NCCL raised various monetary claims after completion. Under the contract's General Conditions, only claims that were formally "Notified" during the work and included in the contractor's Final Bill could go to arbitration, and disputes over whether a claim even qualified as a "Notified Claim" were excluded from arbitration altogether and had to be decided first by IOCL's own General Manager. When IOCL's General Manager rejected most of NCCL's claims as not being validly "Notified Claims," NCCL approached the Delhi High Court under Section 11(6) of the Arbitration Act, which appointed an arbitrator for all the disputes; IOCL appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that even after the 2015 amendment (Section 11(6A)) narrowed a court's role at the referral stage largely to checking whether an arbitration agreement exists, the court can still undertake a limited, prima facie examination of whether a dispute falls within an "excepted matter" expressly excluded from arbitration by the contract, or where facts show clear "accord and satisfaction" (i.e., the claim was already finally settled). Applying this, the Court found that where the General Manager had clearly and conclusively decided that certain claims were not "Notified Claims" (as the contract required such threshold questions to be decided by the General Manager, not the arbitrator), those specific disputes could not be referred to arbitration at all, and it set aside the High Court's orders referring them. However, on the question of whether payments already accepted by NCCL amounted to a full and final settlement ("accord and satisfaction"), the Court found the facts were genuinely disputed and arguable, not an "open and shut case," and left that issue to be decided by the arbitrator. The five connected appeals were disposed of differently based on each one's specific General Manager decision.
Contracting parties can validly agree to carve out certain threshold questions (like whether a claim was properly raised/"notified") from the scope of arbitration and assign them to a specified authority instead; courts enforcing arbitration clauses will respect such clear contractual carve-outs, while leaving genuinely disputed factual questions (like whether a settlement was truly final) to the arbitrator rather than deciding them upfront.
