Kanchhu v. Prakash Chand
Background
In 1987, Kanchhu sued his brothers (the respondents) to cancel a sale deed for land, alleging fraud. The respondents filed a written statement but then repeatedly sought adjournments and stopped participating, leading the trial court to set them ex parte and decree the suit in Kanchhu's favour in 1991. The respondents' applications to recall the ex-parte decree and their subsequent appeal were both dismissed years later for failing to show sufficient cause for their absence. Decades on, the respondents' writ petition before the Allahabad High Court challenging this was first dismissed as infructuous in 2011, but in 2024, over six years after that dismissal, the High Court recalled its own order, condoned the delay, and set aside the 1991 ex-parte decree.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court found the High Court's 2024 order deeply flawed. It held that the High Court, exercising supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227, wrongly sat as an appellate court re-examining the merits of the original ex-parte decree instead of confining itself to whether the respondents had shown "sufficient cause" for their prolonged absence from the 1991 trial, which they had not, having taken ten adjournments before disappearing and never proving their claimed illness through evidence. The Court also criticized the High Court for ignoring the reasoned orders of the trial court and the appellate court on this point. It restored the original appellate order upholding the ex-parte decree and dismissed the respondents' writ petition, while also cautioning courts against too readily accepting a litigant's excuse that "it was my lawyer's fault."
Lesson Learnt
A defendant who is set ex parte and later seeks to reopen a decree must actually prove "sufficient cause" for their absence with evidence, not mere assertions, and a supervisory court reviewing that decision cannot re-decide the case on its merits as if it were an appeal.