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Brigade Enterprises Limited v. Anil Kumar Virmani & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2021 INSC 918Decided 17 Dec 2021
Civil Appeal No. 1779 of 2021
Justice Hemant Gupta · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

A residential project with over 1,100 apartments across three blocks was delayed in handing over possession. Owners of just 91 apartments (out of the much larger total) jointly filed a consumer complaint against the builder and sought the National Commission's permission to represent all buyers in the project as a "class action" under Section 35(1)(c) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. The National Commission allowed this, and the builder appealed, arguing the 91 complainants did not truly represent the interests of everyone in the project.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that a representative/class-action complaint requires genuine "sameness of interest" among everyone being represented - which was missing here, since one entire block's owners were not involved at all, delay periods varied widely between buyers, and some buyers had already pursued separate complaints elsewhere. However, the Court did not throw out the case altogether: it held the complaint could continue as an ordinary joint complaint on behalf of just the 91 actual complainants (not all ~1,134 buyers), while other interested buyers remained free to apply to join in.

Lesson Learnt

A small group of buyers or consumers cannot automatically bind or represent everyone else in a large project through a "class action" complaint unless they can show real commonality of circumstances and interest with the whole group; short of that, they can still pursue their own joint complaint for themselves.

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

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