A. Murugesan v. Smt. Jamuna Rani
Background
The respondent had sued the appellant for specific performance of a 1995 property sale agreement, having already paid Rs. 2.25 lakh of the Rs. 3 lakh price. When the case was called for trial on 16.03.2009, the appellant-defendant was absent because advocates across the district were boycotting courts that day, and he claimed he was also down with viral fever; the trial court proceeded ex-parte and decreed the suit against him. His application to set aside that ex-parte decree, and his subsequent appeal and revision, were all rejected by the trial court, the appellate court, and the Madras High Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that all three lower courts had made the same legal error: under Order IX Rule 13 of the CPC, an application to set aside an ex-parte decree must be decided only on whether the defendant has shown "sufficient cause" for his absence on the specific date the case was called, not by looking at his past conduct or litigation history, which is what the trial court had improperly relied on. Applying its own earlier ruling in G.P. Srivastava v. R.K. Raizada, the Court found that the advocates' court boycott on that day, which had led to all other cases being adjourned while only this one proceeded ex-parte, amounted to sufficient cause. It therefore set aside all three lower court orders, allowed the application to recall the ex-parte decree, and directed the trial court to dispose of the long-pending 1997 suit within six months, while expressly not commenting on the merits of the underlying dispute.
Lesson Learnt
When asking a court to excuse your absence from a hearing, the court must judge "sufficient cause" only by what happened on that specific date (such as a genuine lawyers' strike or illness): it cannot be denied by pointing to unrelated past delays in the case.