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Synopsis

The Supreme Court has said that carelessness or negligence of lawyer, by itself, cannot be a ground to condone long and inordinate delay as the litigant owes a duty to be vigilant of his own rights and is expected to be equally alert about the judicial proceedings pending in the court initiated at his instance.

A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan said that the litigant should not be permitted to throw the entire blame on the head of the advocate and thereby disown him at any time and seek relief.

The court expressed concern over the recent trend of litigants blaming the counsel over the delays or the counsel citing personal difficulties for such excuses.

"We have noticed over a period of time the growing tendency on the part of the litigants in throwing the entire blame on the head of the advocate. Not only this, we have come across cases where the concerned advocate has filed an affidavit in favour of his client(s) saying that he was unable to attend the proceedings due to some personal reasons difficulties thereby facilitating the litigant to get the delay condoned," the bench said.

Dealing with a petition filed by one Nitin Mahadeo Jawale and others, the bench declined to interfere with the Bombay High Court's order setting aside a decision allowing the other party to file a written statement after 4.5 years of delay.

In such cases, the bench said, "Even if we assume for a moment that the concerned lawyer was careless or negligent, this, by itself, cannot be a ground to condone long and inordinate delay as the litigant owes a duty to be vigilant of his own rights and is expected to be equally vigilant about the judicial proceedings pending in the court initiated at his instance".

The instant petition arose from the order passed by the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Bench at Aurangabad in a writ petition of April 12, 2024.

The High Court had allowed the petition filed by the original plaintiff (respondent no 1 herein) and thereby set aside the order passed by the Joint Civil Judge, Junior Division, Jamkhed condoning the delay of 4½ years in filing the written statement.

The petitioners before the top court were the original defendants and respondent no 1 was the original plaintiff.

"It appears from the materials on record that as the defendants failed to file their written statement in time the stage to file written statement was closed," the bench noted.

Having examined the matter, the bench dismissed the instant petition, saying, "We find no error not to speak of any error of law in the impugned judgment passed by the High Court."

On November 21, with similar observations, the same bench had dismissed a plea by one Rajneesh Kumar and others against the Himachal Pradesh High Court's order of 2019 which allowed the civil revision application filed by the original defendant or counter claimant and thereby quashed and set aside the order passed by the District Judge, Shimla condoning the delay of more than 534 days in filing the appeal by the petitioners (original plaintiffs).

Case Title: Nitin Mahadeo Jawale & Ors Vs Bhaskar Mahadeo Mutke