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Judgment
Curgenven, J.—The plaintiffs are the petitioners. The suit was brought on an insufficiently stamped promissory note which was for this
reason rejected by the Subordinate Judge and the suit dismissed. The question is whether having regard to the provisions of Section 36 of the
Stamp Act the Subordinate Judge was right in rejecting the note; in other words, whether the note had not already been admitted in evidence. The
circumstances are set out in the judgment of the Lower Court. It appears that the 1st defendant had admitted execution of the note and the hearing
of the case had been closed and judgment was in preparation when the Subordinate Judge''s attention was drawn to the fact that the note was
insufficiently stamped. He then proceeded to consider whether he had in fact admitted the document and answered the question in the negative. He
was guided to this conclusion by a decision of this Court, Venkanna v. Parasuram Byas ILR (1929) Mad. 137 : 56 M.L.J. 633, where it has been
held that a document cannot be deemed to have been admitted in evidence until the Judge has applied his mind to a consideration of its
admissibility. In that case there occurred the circumstance that the endorsement required by Order 13, Rule 4 of the CPC had not only been made
but had been endorsed by the rubber stamp of the presiding officer. In the present case the endorsement had been made by the clerk but had not
been signed or initialled. All this is quite unessential and we have to consider whether the Subordinate Judge had applied his mind. It is argued that
the document must have been admitted before the stage came for writing the judgment. But although it may be wrong to commence a judgment
before completing such matters as admitting documents that is not to say that admission had actually taken place. It is difficult to resist the
statement of the Court itself that no occasion had arisen for it to look at the document and that it had not in fact considered the question of its
admissibility.
In these circumstances I cannot differ from the view that the stage had not been reached at which that admissibility could not be questioned and
I think therefore that the suit was properly dismissed. The Revision Petition is dismissed with costs, one set.