Ramji Singh Patel v. Gyan Chandra Jaiswal
Background
The appellant, a practising advocate, lived next door to the respondent, who ran a flour mill, oil mill and ice factory from his own residential premises. After the respondent installed a diesel generator set in 2003, the appellant complained that the resulting vibration cracked his house's walls and that the noise and air pollution harmed his family's health and disrupted his legal practice from home. Both parties filed competing civil suits for injunctions, and while the appellant's suit succeeded before the Trial Court and the First Appellate Court, the High Court of Allahabad reversed this in a second appeal, holding (among other things) that the appellant's suit was time-barred because the mill's operations had actually begun back in 1990.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the High Court erred procedurally by entertaining a limitation plea for the first time in a second appeal, since no such issue had been raised or framed as a pure question of law at trial: it was, at best, a mixed question of law and fact that could not be raised that late. On the merits, the Court also found the High Court's reasoning flawed: the real cause of nuisance was the diesel generator set installed only in 2003, making the 2004 suit timely, and the lower courts' factual findings that the generator caused wall cracks and health-damaging pollution meant the nuisance was a continuing wrong, not a stale one. The Court allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court's judgment, and restored the decree in the appellant's favour, with no order as to costs.
Lesson Learnt
A plea of limitation that depends on disputed facts (a "mixed question of law and fact") generally cannot be raised for the first time in a second appeal if it was never raised or framed as an issue at trial; and nuisance caused by an ongoing activity (like continuous noise or pollution from machinery) is treated as a continuing wrong, so the limitation period runs from when that specific activity started, not from some earlier, unrelated point in time.