JUDGMENT
The decision of the Subordinate Judge cannot be upheld. The award only declared the rights of the plaintiff and of the defendant. It stated that the plaintiff was entitled to recover the amount due under the promissory note and that the defendant was not entitled to any damages from the plaintiff. It did not purport to give any decree respecting the amount due under the promissory note. The award has been worked out by the delivery of the promissory note to the plaintiff. The plaintiff is entitled under the award itself to bring a suit upon the promissory note. It was not necessary to have referred to the award in the plaint. The plaintiff is entitled to sue on the note without referenced it. The suit may also be regarded as one to enforce the obligation created by the award. In any view the plaintiff's claim is well founded. The Subordinate Judge is wrong in saying that the award is a bar to the institution of the suit. But I am very much impressed by the fact that this is a case under Sect. 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In this Court, individual Judges have expressed opinions regarding the scope of that section which are not easily reconcilable. Different Benches have taken different views. As a result of the examination of the authorities, I find that the predominant view in Madras is that the High Court should interfere in all cases in which the petitioner can satisfy the Court that the order of the lower Court is manifestly wrong. My view of the present case is this. The Subordinate Judge, to use the language used by some of the Judges in Kristamma Naidu v. Chapa Naidu, has taken a perverse view of the point arising for decision. He has misread the terms of the award. The award hands over the promissory note to the petitioner; the only object of doing so is to enable him to recover the money due thereunder: and yet the Subordinate Judge says that the award is a bar to this suit. I am clearly of opinion that the Subordinate Judge is wrong. The result is the petitioner is deprived of the very right which he sought to establish by arbitration. I hold that the Subordinate Judge acted illegally and irregularly in the exercise of his jurisdiction by depriving the petitioner of the fruits of the award. Sect. 115 should in my opinion be construed to advance justice; the words “acting illegally or with material irregularity in the exercise of jurisdiction” should be read as covering cases in which the Court below has failed to arrive at an obvious conclusion which the facts stated by him necessitate, or has so misapplied the principles of law as to result in the perversion of justice. The Court of revision will certainly have no power to substitute its own finding of fact for that of the lower Court; but if on findings come to by it and on admitted facts, the lower Court fails to draw the necessary inference, it is acting illegally and with material irregularity. A further qualification should be made. As it is discretionary to call for the records and to revise the proceedings of the Courts below, even an apparent infringement of law may not suffice, if the party seeking the aid of the Court has no merits in his favour but is only relying on technicalities. The word ‘jurisdiction’ in clause (3) of Sect. 115 should not be understood as merely indicating the pecuniary, local, or other statutory limits of a forum before which proceeding are taken. The opinion of Shew Prosad Bungshidhur v. Ram Chunder Haribux that if the Court below commits irregularities in procedure, the High Court will have power to set aside its judgment assumes that the word ‘jurisdiction’ in clause (3) is used in a larger sense than is generally attributed to it. It means “the authority or power which a Court has, to do justice in the causes of complaint brought before him.” I do not think there is anything in Amir Hassan Khan v. Sheo Baksh Singh which militates against this view.
It is with some hesitation that I have come to the conclusion that the judgment of the Subordinate Judge should be reversed and that the case should be sent back to him for disposal on the merits. Costs to abide the result.
Petition allowed.