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Binod Pathak & Ors. v. Shankar Choudhary & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 842Decided 14 Jul 2025
C.A. No.-007706-007706 - 2025 (Arising out of SLP (C) No. 1536 of 2015)
Justice J.B. Pardiwala · Justice R. Mahadevan

Background

In a decades-old land title suit from Bihar, the trial court dismissed the plaintiffs' claim, but the First Appellate Court reversed it and decreed the suit in their favour. Several of the original defendants had died during the pendency of that first appeal, and their lawyers never informed the court or the other side of the deaths, so their legal heirs were never substituted on record. When the defendants challenged the decree in Second Appeal, the Patna High Court held that because the decree was "joint and indivisible," the failure to substitute the deceased defendants' heirs meant the entire first appeal had automatically abated, and it set aside the decree in the plaintiffs' favour on that technical ground.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined Order XXII Rule 10A CPC, which obliges a deceased litigant's own pleader (lawyer) to inform the court of the death, and held that this duty is one of candour owed to the court as an officer of the court: merely stating the fact of death is not enough; the pleader must also furnish the names of the legal representatives so the other side can seek substitution. Applying the legal maxim that no one should benefit from their own wrong ("nullus commodum capere potest de injuria sua propia"), the Court held that a party (here, the defendants' side) whose own lawyer failed to disclose the death cannot then turn around and claim abatement as a "right" or advantage flowing from that very non-disclosure: abatement is a matter of judicial discretion, not an automatic entitlement, especially where the other side had no way of knowing about the death. The Court partly allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court's order, and remanded the second appeal for fresh hearing on the abatement and other substantive issues, directing the High Court to decide it within three months given the suit's age (since 1984).

Lesson Learnt

A lawyer has a personal duty to promptly inform the court when their own client dies during litigation; if that duty is neglected, the other side cannot be penalized by automatic "abatement" of the case. Courts will not let a party profit from its own lawyer's failure to disclose a death.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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