Inbasegaran v. S. Natarajan, through legal representatives
Background
This order sends the case back; it does not decide the dispute. A purchaser agreed to buy a housing-board plot after the allottee obtained the Board's sale deed, and constructed a building there. He first sought an injunction against threatened dispossession and later sued to compel completion of the sale. The High Court treated the later suit as barred because he had not requested that relief in the first suit.
Decision Breakdown
This is not a final decision on the dispute. The Supreme Court partly allowed the purchaser's appeals and rejected the procedural bar. The earlier suit responded to a threat of forcible dispossession, while the later claim arose from disclosure of the Board's transfer and the allottee's refusal to perform the sale agreement. Those causes of action were distinct on the pleadings here, and the purchaser had not intentionally abandoned a then-available claim. The Court remanded the remaining issues to the High Court, disposed of the connected cross-appeals and ordered the parties to maintain the existing possession until further High Court orders. It did not finally grant enforcement of the sale agreement.
Lesson Learnt
A later contractual claim is not automatically barred by an earlier suit protecting possession. Courts compare when and why each claim arose; if both remedies already arise from the same cause of action, omitting one can still have consequences.