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Biswajit Sukul v. Deo Chand Sarda & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 874Decided 25 Sept 2018
Civil Appeal No. 9956 of 2018
Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre · Justice S. Abdul Nazeer

Background

Biswajit Sukul, claiming to be the landlord of a shop in Silchar, sued his tenant Deo Chand Sarda for arrears of rent and eviction, alleging the tenant stopped paying rent from August 1977. The Trial Court split the key tenancy issue into two parts, it held in the landlord's favour that a landlord-tenant relationship existed, but held in the tenant's favour that the tenant was not a defaulter, and on that basis dismissed the suit. The landlord's first appeal and subsequent High Court revision were both dismissed, including the First Appellate Court going on to re-examine and reverse the landlord-favourable finding on tenancy, even though the tenant had never cross-appealed that finding.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the First Appellate Court had no jurisdiction to re-examine and reverse the finding on the existence of the landlord-tenant relationship, because the defendants (tenants) had never filed a cross-objection under Order 41 Rule 22 CPC challenging that specific finding: a party cannot get an unfavourable finding overturned in the other side's appeal without filing its own cross-objection. The High Court compounded this error by not noticing it. The Court therefore set aside both the High Court's and the First Appellate Court's judgments and remanded the case to the First Appellate Court, directing it to decide the landlord's appeal afresh but confined only to the issues that had actually been decided against the landlord (cause of action and the rent-default question), within six months, clarifying it had not examined the underlying merits itself.

Lesson Learnt

In a civil appeal, if you want an adverse finding reversed, you must file your own appeal or cross-objection (under Order 41 Rule 22 CPC): you cannot get it undone simply by defending the other side's appeal, and appellate courts cannot exceed the scope of what is actually challenged before them.

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

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