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Judgment
Lord Phillimore
This is an appeal against a decree of the High Court of Bengal which reversed the decree of the Subordinate Judge and passed a decree for the plaintiffs as hereafter stated.
The suit was brought to recover possession of 5760 bighas of land. The plaintiffs failed in the Court of first instance, but succeeded except as to certain smaller portions in the Court of Appeal.
The story is a long and complicated one involving the consideration of some oral evidence of not much importance, and a great number of documents ranging over nearly a century. (After considering the evidence their Lordships concluded). Their Lordships had no doubt that the decision of the Subordinate Judge was right, and should not have been reversed by the High Court. It is not necessary for this purpose to rely upon the statute of limitations, though if it were, their Lordships would agree with the Subordinate Judge upon this point also. The supposed recent acts of ownership by the plaintiffs are with one possible exception merely grants of Jalkar leases in the Gangnala which, by the terms of their putni lease, had passed to them independently of Pingaldaha, and which they could in turn sub-demise. There is nothing to compel a Court to hold that these rights extended over the lands in dispute.
Their Lordships cannot leave this case without making an observation of a nature which unfortunately this Board has had to make before but seldom with such insistence as in the present case. The printed record contains 2187 pages, besides about 100 pages of supplementary appendix; 368 of these pages are taken up in setting out the items of a measurement "chitta" of the property in the possession of the defendants in 1852. Their Lordships appreciate the importance of this document as supporting the possession by the defendants at that date of the property in dispute, but a few pages would have given all the materials necessary.
If the first nine pages giving a day''s work with the details of the persons present, and showing various parcels of land in Kalinagar and one or two pages showing parcels in the other disputed village of Rattinagar had been printed and a few lines added stating that these were printed as specimen pages, every object would have been obtained. It is unfortunate that practitioners in India will not undertake the very slight responsibility, which such action would lay upon them. But if they will not, it ought to be the duty of some official in the High Court to see that such wholly unnecessary expense, as has been incurred in the present case should not be allowed.
It was the appellants'' duty to print the records. It is due to their default in the exercise of a discriminating judgment that so much unnecessary matter was wastefully printed, and as a lesson to their advisers and all other practitioners, their Lordships propose that the Registrar of the High Court of Bengal should disallow the actual costs of printing the record from page 1,442 to 1,664, both inclusive, and from page 1,690 to 1,797 both inclusive and such consequential costs as he may think right in proportion, and that the costs to be taxed in England should also be reduced by such amount as the Registrar of the Privy Council may consider is attributable to the insertion of this superfluous matter.
Their Lordships will, therefore, humbly advice His Majesty that this appeal should be allowed, that the decree of the High Court should be reversed, and the decree of the Subordinate Judge dismissing the suit with costs to be paid to the second defendant should be restored, and that the defendants should have their costs in the High Court and their costs less those disallowed as aforesaid of their appeal to His Majesty in Council.