- (1.) Writes A. G. Gardiner, if we may start off with a strange flourish, that 'the supreme art is to achieve the maximum result with the minimum..... effort. It is the art of the great etcher who with a line reveals infinity. It is the art of the great dramatist who with a significant word shakes the soul. Schiller, said Coleridge, burns a city to create his effect of terror: Shakespeare drops a handkerchief and freezes our blood". For this requisite reason, brevity is the soul of art and justicing, including judgment-writing. must practise the art of brevity, especially where no great issue of legal moment compels long exposition, Therefore, we mean to be brief to the bare bones with a few facts here and a brief expression of law there, by adopting the technique which 'is simply the perfect economy of means to an end'. For another reason also the need for parsimony exists. The court is in crisis, docket logged and fatigued. A judgment can be brief but not a blank and there is no reason to repeat the details of a case where there is an exhaustive statement in the judgment under appeal, as in this case. We adopt those long pages of judicial manuscript and abbreviate our conclusion in a few pages.
(2.) The appellant-plaintiff, a woman was on terms of intimacy with the respondent-defendant, a wealthy man who had enjoyed a long and intimate relationship with her. The respondent owned a lovely mansion on the Marina in Madras which he agreed to sell to the appellant for a consideration of around Rs. 4 lakhs way back in April 1967. This was subject to an equitable mortgage over the property in favour of the South Indian Bank, Coimbatore. When the two separated litigation erupted. A suit for specific performance of the agreement to sell was brought where both side took up unrighteous position, and the trial court (the original side of the High Court of Madras) decreed the suit directing the plaintiff to deposit the mortgage amount plus Rs. 5,000 with interest at 11 per cent till the date of payment. The whole consideration, except the mortgage amount and a sum of Rs.5,000 had already been paid at the time of the agreement and possession had been made over to the plaintiff by the defendant. The decree also provided that the amount should be deposited into court by the time specified therein, failure to do which would result in the suit itself being dismissed. The amount was not deposited within the time limited but some months later the plaintiff paid the mortgage money to the mortgagee bank and took an assignment of its rights and got herself impleaded as second plaintiff in the suit which, by then, had been instituted by the bank against the present defendant (O.S.No. 154 of 1968). Eventually, the mortgage suit resulted in a decree in favour of the present plaintiff (second plaintiff therein); and the amount now due has, by now, swollen to around Rs.11 lakhs or so.
(3.) An appeal had been carried by the plaintiff-appellant to a Division Bench of the High Court which rejected most of her contentions except one. The Court, while affirming that the direction to make a deposit into Court within three months was valid, vacated the default clause, namely, the dismissal of the suit on non-payment within the time. Read in the light of Section 28 of the Specific Relief Act and the rulings on the point which were cited before us, the proper course in this situation was to pass a decree for specific performance, which would, for all practical purposes, be a preliminary decree. The suit would continue and be under the control of the court until appropriate motion was made by either party for passing a final decree. The plaintiff-appellant moved the court by interlocutory applications for giving credit to the amount paid by her to the mortgagee bank and to pass a final decree in her favour. That was not granted. Various skirmishes, essentially of an interlocutory nature, took place. Ultimately, on two applications, one by the plaintiff-appellant and the other by the defendant-respondent the court made a judgment which is the subject-matter of this appeal. The plaintiff's application was dismissed and extension of time by way of adjustment of the mortgage amount paid was refused and a decree for rescission of the contract for sale was passed and for delivery of possession with mesne profits.;