Sri Shivaji Balaram Haibatti v. Sri Avinash Maruthi Pawar
Background
The appellant bought a shop in Belgaum in 1997 from its previous owner and sued the respondent, who had been occupying the shop even before the sale, for possession, claiming the respondent had no right to be there. The respondent denied the appellant's title and instead claimed he had acquired ownership himself through decades of "adverse possession," not that he was a tenant. The trial court and the first appellate court both ruled in the appellant's favour, rejecting the adverse-possession claim, but the High Court, in a second appeal, reversed this and dismissed the suit, holding, on its own, that the respondent was actually occupying as a tenant and that the appellant should have sued under rent laws instead.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court restored the decisions of the trial court and first appellate court, finding the High Court's approach "wholly perverse." It held that a second appeal under Section 100 of the Civil Procedure Code can only be decided on the "substantial question of law" that the High Court itself formulated when admitting the appeal, and the question framed here was narrow (whether the evidence was read correctly), not whether a tenancy existed. Since the respondent had never even pleaded that he was a tenant in his written statement, he had only claimed ownership through adverse possession, the High Court had no factual foundation to invent a tenancy defence or decide the case on that basis. The Court held that both lower courts' concurrent factual findings (that the appellant owned the shop and the respondent was an encroacher who failed to prove adverse possession) were binding and could not be disturbed in a second appeal.
Lesson Learnt
A court hearing a second appeal cannot decide a case based on a theory or defence that neither party actually raised or proved at trial: judges must stick to the specific legal question framed when the appeal was admitted and to the facts the parties themselves pleaded.