- (1.) The Appellants against whom the Arbitration Tribunal of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry made an award for Rs. 5,423 together with interest at the instance of the Respondents applied before Bachawat, J., for an order setting aside the award and having failed to obtain the order they have preferred the present appeal.
(2.) The facts are as follows: The Appellants were the buyers under a contract, dated September 29, 1952, of 150 bales of B. Twills from the Respondents, the transaction having been negotiated by a broker, named B.B. Agarwalla. Delivery of the goods was to be given in three months' instalments of equal quantities in the months of October, November and December 1952. The instalments for October and November were duly delivered and accepted and no question arises in this appeal regarding those instalments. As regards the December instalment, the due date was December 31, 1952, but it is the common case of the parties that the date was extended up to January 4, 1953. The dispute is as to whether the goods were delivered or offered for delivery on that date. The contract said in the usual language that the delivery was to be alongside an Export Vessel in the Port of Calcutta, but subsequently the vessel was specified and the Appellants issued shipping instructions to the Respondents to take the goods alongside a vessel called the "Gambhira". The Appellants' case is that an employee of theirs went to the Port on January 5, 1953, at about 3 p.m. and ascertained from a clerk of Messrs. Mackinnon Mackenzie and Co., Ltd., the Managing Agents of the Shipping Company, that up to that time there was no entry for the cargo on the register. Not unnaturally, the Appellants presumed that the Respondents had failed to carry out the terms of the contract and to deliver the goods in due time and acting on that presumption, they cancelled the contract. The Respondents' case is that the goods were in fact taken and placed alongside the "Gambhira" on January 4, 1953, as stipulated, and that if any failure had occurred on the part of any of the contracting parties, it was not a failure on the Respondents' part to deliver the goods, but a failure on the part of the Appellants to take and accept delivery. In accordance with their own case the Respondents submitted bills to the Appellants which the latter declined to pay. The dispute was thereupon referred to the arbitration of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and ended in an award in favour of the Respondents as I have already stated.
(3.) The Appellants' application for an order setting aside the award was based on the general ground that there had been no proper hearing of the case by the arbitrators. Mr. Sen, who appeared on behalf of the Appellants, conveniently subdivided the general ground into four specific ones. I shall follow his subdivision and deal with the contentions advanced in respect of each.;