SULEMAN Vs. HAJI ABDUL LATIF

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The action in which these appeals arise is a partnership action in which the plaintiffs claimed (") a decree for dissolution, and (b) that the accounts of the partnership be taken. Other relief was claimed in the following terms: (c) That sums found duo to the plaintiffs by the defendants be ordered to be paid by them."

(2.) Up to a point the facts are not in dispute. The plaintiffs, or their predecessors in title, had for some years before 1902 carried on a business in Karachi, as partners, in the firm name of A, Haji Dossal & Sons. In the year 1902 the firm acquired a business of dealing in arms and ammunition, which originally belonged to one A. Haji Tar Mahomed and which in 1902 was being carried on by his son Haji Hamad. The firm having acquired the said business, carried it on as a branch or department of their general business which they continued to carry on in their firm name, A. Haji Dossal & Sons. At the time the arms and ammunition business was acquired, the defendants (who were relations of Haji Tar Mahomed and Haji Mahomed and had worked in that business) became associated with the firm, and so continued in association with the firm until the dissolution decreed in this action. It is at this point that the facts cease to be undisputed, the principal issue in the action bsing as to the position occupied by the defendants in relation to the arms and ammunition branch or department from 1902 onwards.

(3.) The contention of the plaintiffs was that from 1902 to 1907 the defendants were employed as paid servants of the firm, that from 1907 to 1911 they were partners in the business of the arms and ammunition branch or department with a two anna share on the profits and losses of the said business, and that from the beginning of 1912 onwards their share was increased to four annas. The defendants contended that they were partners throughout with a two anna share from 1902 to 1911, and an eight anna share from the commencement of 1912 onwards.