Suit Dismissed, Production Order Erroneous: Supreme Court's Intervention in Civil Procedure.


23 April 2025 Civil Appeals >> Civil & Consumer Law  

In Sri Shrikanth NS & Others v/s K. Munivenkatappa & Another., the Supreme Court addressed appeals against a High Court order that upheld a First Appellate Court's decision to allow two applications filed by the respondent/plaintiff. One application sought the production of a mutation register extract (I.A. No. 2 under Order 11 Rule 14 CPC), and the other sought permission to raise additional grounds in the pending first appeal (I.A. No. 5). The suit itself (O.S. No. 434 of 2011) had been dismissed by the Trial Court under Order VII Rule 11 CPC for not seeking cancellation of a 1939 sale deed.

 

 

The Supreme Court found the order allowing the production of the mutation register extract (I.A. No. 2) to be flawed. It reasoned that Order 11 Rule 14 CPC allows for document production during the pendency of a suit. In this case, the suit had already been dismissed, and the First Appellate Court was only examining the validity of the plaint's rejection, limited to the plaint's contents. The Supreme Court held that the First Appellate Court incorrectly relied on an observation made by the Supreme Court in a dismissed criminal special leave petition, which stated that observations in the criminal proceedings wouldn't prejudice the civil court's determination of the sale deed's validity. This observation, the Supreme Court clarified, didn't empower the Appellate Court to order document production beyond the scope of reviewing the plaint's rejection. Consequently, the Supreme Court set aside the orders allowing the production of the mutation register extract.

However, the Supreme Court upheld the order allowing the respondent to raise additional grounds in the first appeal (I.A. No. 5), finding no illegality in it.
In conclusion, the Supreme Court partly allowed the appeals, setting aside the orders related to document production but affirming the permission to raise additional grounds in the first appeal.


Code of Civil Procedure, 1908