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.
Land Acquisition Appeal · 2026:DHC:8039
Deadlines for filing appeals matter, and courts are unlikely to excuse very long, poorly-explained delays. A litigant who accepts a particular valuation or benchmark at the trial stage, without presenting evidence to the contrary, will generally not be allowed to seek a better outcome later on appeal.
Civil Miscellaneous (Main) Petition · 2026:DHC:8010
Even a short delay in responding to a summary suit can nearly cost a person their right to defend themselves in court. Even so, courts will usually give a genuine, honestly-explained short delay the benefit of the doubt rather than shutting the door entirely, especially when doing so avoids a decree being passed without a hearing on the actual merits.
Criminal Appeal · 2026:DHC:7989-DB
A conviction cannot rest on the "last seen together" circumstance alone, however suspicious it looks. The prosecution must build a complete, gap-free chain of evidence that leaves no reasonable possibility of innocence, and any genuine doubt must benefit the accused, not the prosecution.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:8044
An employer, including a government body, cannot dismiss even a daily-wage or temporary worker as punishment for alleged wrongdoing without first giving them a fair, formal inquiry with a real chance to defend themselves; skipping that step can make the termination illegal regardless of how the employer labels it.
Regular Second Appeal · 2026:DHC:8003
When a special law like the Electricity Act sets up its own dedicated authority to resolve a particular type of dispute (here, compensation for unauthorised power lines), ordinary civil courts generally cannot step in even if the other side's conduct was clearly improper. The aggrieved person must go to that specific authority (District Magistrate/Police Commissioner) instead, and must also be ready to prove the actual amount of loss suffered, not just assert a claim.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8047
A long gap between a person's death and a Will being taken to court for probate is not automatically suspicious if there's a reasonable family explanation for it; and a party who repeatedly fails to use the opportunities a court gives them to produce evidence cannot expect a second chance for the same evidence at the appeal stage.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8035
Where a genuine compromise is reached in a case involving non-serious, personal-dispute offences, courts can quash the FIR to spare both sides a lengthy trial, but only after the judge is personally satisfied that the settlement is voluntary and genuine, not merely on paper.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:7977-DB
Being investigated twice over GST credit from the same supplier is not automatically illegal. The "same subject matter" protection only kicks in when both proceedings target the exact same contravention, so a genuine fraud probe can run independently of an earlier routine tax assessment.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8014
In Indian property law, being physically absent from a jointly-inherited property does not by itself strip a family co-owner of their rightful share. The other occupants must prove they treated the absent owner as clearly and knowingly excluded, not just that they lived there without them.
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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.
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Jet Airways (India) Ltd. was pushed into the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) in 2019 on an application by State Bank of India (the lead lender). A resolution plan submitted by a consortium (the "Successful Resolution Applicant" or SRA, led by Murari Lal Jalan and Florian Fritsch) was approved by the NCLT, requiring the SRA to meet various conditions (including payment of workmen's dues, airport dues, and infusing funds) before an "Effective Date" for handover of the airline. Years later, the SRA had still not implemented the plan properly (failing to pay outstanding dues in full and defaulting on the first tranche payment), yet the NCLT and NCLAT held that the Conditions Precedent had been fulfilled and even allowed the SRA's Performance Bank Guarantee to be adjusted against its own payment obligation.
The Supreme Court held that the NCLAT and NCLT had erred: the Conditions Precedent had not actually been satisfied by the SRA (airport dues and workmen's dues remained unpaid, contrary to the Resolution Plan and an earlier Supreme Court order), so the "Effective Date" itself could not have been validly fixed, and the Performance Bank Guarantee could not lawfully be adjusted against the SRA's own payment obligation. Given the SRA's prolonged and substantial failure to implement the approved plan, the Court ordered that the Corporate Debtor (Jet Airways) be sent into liquidation under Section 33(3) of the IBC, forfeited the Rs. 200 crore already infused by the SRA, and permitted the lenders to encash the Rs. 150 crore Performance Bank Guarantee. The Court also flagged broader shortcomings in the IBC framework around resolution-plan implementation and non-compliance, sending suggestions to the Finance Ministry and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India.
Winning a bid to take over a bankrupt company under the IBC comes with binding obligations: a resolution applicant that persistently fails to honour the terms of its own approved plan (paying dues, meeting deadlines) risks having the company sent into liquidation and losing the money it has already put in, rather than being allowed to renegotiate its way out of default.
