BHIKAJI RAGHUNATH VARERKAR Vs. ANANT LAXMAN KHANDALEKAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In permitting the plaintiff to withdraw this suit with liberty to bring a fresh one, notwithstanding that the trial had been going on for several days, and the evidence concluded and the case fixed for final argument, I would hold that the learned Judge misdirected himself as to the principles which should have guided him in exercising his discretion. The fourth paragraph of his judgment sets out the principle which he thinks should be adopted. It is in effect that if a plaintiff finds at the trial that he may fail because his evidence is scanty, he should be given another chance of bringing another suit to supplement his scanty evidence. That principle is not the law of this land, If it were, it would doubtless lead to a great deal of perjury and to a vast increase of litigation and hardship on innocent litigants. That being so, it is open to us to revise the discretion which the learned Judge exercised.

(2.) Doing that, it appears that the only ground on which the trial application was based is that certain documents in the possession of the plaintiff which he deliberately suppressed until the trial of the suit and which were consequently disallowed by the learned Judge ought now to be put in evidence and an opportunity given for that purpose. There again the plaintiff has deliberately violated another wholesome principle, viz., that parties should disclose their relevant documents in dispute, and not keep them back until the trial is in progress.

(3.) Under these circumstances, we think the application at that late stage of the trial to withdraw the suit with liberty to bring a fresh one ought to have been refused.