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Nandlal Lohariya v. Jagdish Chand Purohit & Ors.

Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2021 INSC 708Decided 8 Nov 2021
Special Leave Petition (Civil) Diary No. 24842 of 2021
Justice M.R. Shah · Justice B.V. Nagarathna

Background

The petitioner had earlier filed three consumer complaints against BSNL through three different advocates; all three complaints were dismissed on merits by the District Consumer Forum. He then filed a fresh complaint, itself filed with a delay of 365 to 630 days, against those three advocates, alleging deficiency in service and claiming Rs.15 lakhs in compensation for how they had handled his original cases. This complaint was dismissed by the District Forum, the State Commission, and the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in turn, and the petitioner then approached the Supreme Court with a special leave petition that was itself filed 593 days late.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that merely losing a case on its merits, where there is no actual finding of negligence by the advocate, cannot by itself amount to "deficiency in service." It reasoned that in every lawsuit one side necessarily loses, and if a losing party could routinely sue their own lawyer for compensation whenever this happened, it would open the floodgates to such claims without any real basis. Since none of the forums below had found any negligence on the part of the three advocates, the complaint against them was rightly dismissed at every stage. The Court dismissed the special leave petitions both on the ground of the 593-day delay and on the merits, though it declined to impose the exemplary costs it otherwise might have, given that the case arose out of consumer-forum proceedings.

Lesson Learnt

An advocate cannot be held liable for "deficiency in service" simply because the client's case was lost on its merits: a consumer complaint against a lawyer must actually show genuine negligence or dereliction of duty, not just an unfavourable outcome.

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

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