Janki Prasad Singh v. Baldeo Prasad Tiwari And Others

Stanley, C.J:— We think that the decision of the courts below is correct. The plaintiff appellant has been able to establish no such relationship existing between him and the defendants, as would justify the payment of the money, which he now seeks to recover. It has been found by the courts below that the assignment made to him of the mortgagee rights of the defendants was fictitious and collusive, and consequently the judgment creditor of the assignors had a right to sell those mortgagee rights in execution of their decree. We do not think that section 69 or section 70 of the Contract Act helps the appellants. As regards section 69, a party, who makes a payment on behalf of another, before he can recover the amount so paid, must show that he had an interest in making the payment. Their Lordships of the Privy Council, in dealing with the rights of parties making payments, observed in the case of Ram Tahai Singh v. Biseswar Lal Sahoo(1):— “It is not in every case in which a man has benefited by the money of another, that an obligation to repay that money arises. The question is not to be determined by nice considerations of what may be fair and proper, according to the highest morality. To support such a suit, there must be an obligation expressed or implied to repay. It is well settled that there is no such obligation in the case, of a voluntary payment by A of B's debt.” Now in this case, in view of the facts which have been found by the courts below, we can not discover that there was any obligation either expressed or implied on the part of the appellant, to pay the debt of the respondents. The case, therefore, does not fall within the purview of section 69 of the Contract Act. Nor does it, we think, fall within section 70. In the case of Chedda Lal v. Bkagwan Das(2), it was held by a Bench of this Court that by the use of the word “lawfully” in section 70 of the Contract Act, the legislature had in contemplation cases, in which a person held such a relation to another as either directly to create or as would justify the inference that by some act done for another person, the person doing the act was entitled to look for compensation to the person for whom it was done. In his judgment, Straight, J.—observed “IT the plaintiffs, as mere volunteers, chose to put their bonds into their pockets, and to pay a sum of money, not for the defendants but for themselves, that was their own look out and they can not now “claim the benefits of section 70.” We think upon the facts, therefore, that the payment made by the appellant was a purely voluntary payment and possibly was made as is suggested by the courts below with some sinister object, we’ dismiss the appeal with costs, including fees in this court on the higher scale.

2. Appeal dismissed.