Jiwa Ram Singh vs Bhola and Another

Mahmood, J.—This appeal has arisen out of an action for recovery of Rs. 200 claimed as damages by the plaintiff for his bodily injury resulting from his having been assaulted by the defendants, and also for the consequent loss of reputation and hurt of feelings, and also in respect of the expenses incurred in the hospital, and in payment of fees to the legal practitioners who prosecuted the defendants in the criminal Court in respect of such assault. The first Court decreed the claim in part, but the Lower Appellate Court has modified the first Court''s decree by assessing damages at only Re. 1, to which extent it upheld the first Court''s decree.

The plaintiff has preferred this second appeal; but to the hearing of the appeal Mr. Moti Lal, [sic] who appears for Mr. Howell on behalf of the respondents, objects that, the suit being one cognizable by the Court of Small Causes, no second appeal lies to this Court u/s 586 of the Civil Procedure Code, and in support of this contention the learned pleader cites the case of Gunga Narain Moytro v. Gudadhar Chowdhry 13 W. R. 434 in which GLOVEB and HOBHOUSB, JJ., concurred in the opinion that to suits in which even a portion of the claim for damages was claimed as actual damages, the third proviso of Section 6 of the Mufassil Small Cause Courts Act (XI of 1865) did not apply, and that in such cases no second appeal would lie.

Having read the prayer for relief of the plaintiff in this case contained in in para. 4 of the plaint, I have no doubt that this suit, so far as this preliminary objection is concerned, is on all fours with the case cited on behalf of the respondents. Because there, as here, the claim for damages referred to loss of reputation along with actual damages. In this case it cannot be doubted that the hospital expenses and the fees paid to the lawyer for prosecuting the defendants were claimed as actual damages.

It is of course not necessary for me to decide whether such fees could be claimed; but considering the nature of the suit as set forth in the plaint and the ruling of the Calcutta High Court to which reference has been made, I am of opinion that the suit was one of the nature cognizable by the Small Cause Court, and that, therefore, no second appeal lay to this Court.

Some suggestion was made that, in deciding this point, I should refer to the new Small Cause Courts Act (IX of 1887); but in this case the second appeal was instituted on the 2nd August 1886, and the consideration of the new law would be unnecessary upon general principles of construing statutes, and, indeed, those general principles have been duly given effect to in Clause (3) to Section 3 of this enactment itself, which provides that the new enactment is not to affect any proceedings before or after decree in any suit instituted before the commencement of the Act. It is therefore clear that the new Act is not applicable, and, as I have already said, under the old Act, this was a Small Cause Court suit, and, being of less value than Rs. 500, was not a fit one for being made the subject of second appeal u/s 586 of the Civil Procedure Code. The appeal is dismissed with costs, see also Debt Singh v. Hanuman Upadhya I. L. R. All. 747.