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Srinivas Raghavendrarao Desai (Dead) by LRs vs V. Kumar Vamanrao @ Alok and Ors

Not available · 2024 INSC 165Decided 4 Mar 2024
Not available

Background

A family partition suit was filed seeking a share in various ancestral properties. The Karnataka High Court, deciding cross-appeals, relied heavily on an alleged 1965 oral family partition to hold that certain "Schedule A" properties (including one that the appellant's predecessor, defendant No. 7, had earlier sold to a third party) belonged exclusively to one branch of the family. However, this 1965 partition had never actually been part of the plaintiffs' pleaded case: an application to amend the plaint to introduce this plea had been expressly rejected by the trial court and never challenged further. The appellant, whose predecessor's 2001 sale of one such property was undone by the High Court's ruling, appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that it is a settled principle that no evidence can be led, and no finding can be based on facts, that go beyond a party's pleaded case, and this applies with even greater force where a party specifically sought to amend pleadings to raise a particular plea (the 1965 partition) and that amendment was rejected and left unchallenged. Relying instead on an undisputed 1984 family partition document (which had also surfaced in an earlier, unappealed civil suit), the Court found that the two disputed properties had actually gone to the share of the appellant's predecessor. It set aside the High Court's findings on those two properties, upheld the 2001 sale deed as valid, and allowed the appeals.

Lesson Learnt

A party cannot get a court to rule in its favour based on facts or evidence it never properly pleaded, and if a court expressly refuses to allow a plea to be added by amendment, that same plea cannot be smuggled back in through evidence or a different route; as the Court put it, "what was not permitted to be done directly cannot be permitted to be done indirectly."

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

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