T.K. David v. Kuruppampady Service Co-operative Bank Ltd. & Ors.
Background
The petitioner, an employee of a cooperative bank, was dismissed after a disciplinary inquiry in 2003; years of litigation followed, ultimately resulting in his punishment being converted to compulsory retirement, which the Kerala High Court's Division Bench upheld in 2015. His special leave petition against that 2015 judgment was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2015, and his subsequent review and curative petitions were also dismissed. He then filed a review petition before the High Court itself against its 2015 judgment, which the High Court rejected on merits in 2020, and he challenged that rejection in the present SLP.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that since the original 2015 judgment had already been unsuccessfully challenged before it and had attained finality between the parties, the petitioner could not now use an SLP against the High Court's rejection of a later review petition to indirectly reopen that final judgment. Relying on its precedents in Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Yashwant Singh Negi and Bussa Overseas, the Court reaffirmed the settled principle that where a review petition is simply dismissed (not allowed or modifying the original order), there is no "merger," and any challenge must be to the original judgment, not the review-rejection order, within the time allowed for that. Since the main 2015 judgment could no longer be questioned, no relief could be granted. The SLP was accordingly dismissed.
Lesson Learnt
Once a Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal against a High Court judgment, a litigant cannot resurrect the same dispute years later by challenging only a later order that merely rejected a review petition against that judgment: the challenge to the review's rejection is not a valid substitute for challenging the original judgment itself.