The Judgment of the Court was delivered by

Wallis, C.J:— This is an appeal from a decree of the Subordinate Judge of Kumbakonam dismissing the suit brought by the plaintiff for a declaration that his suspension from the office of temple trustee by the Kumbakonam ??? Committee was illegal and for damages. The decision as to the legality of the suspension depends mainly in this case on the question whether the procedure adopted by the committee can be supported. What happened was that, after the plaintiff had been given notice of some or all of the charges against him, the second defendant, a member of the committee, drew up a report (Exhibit B1) and forwarded copies of it to the other members of the temple committee proposing that the plaintiff and some other trustees should be suspended until further orders. In it he stated that, though the subject had been for a long time before the meeting, it had not been concluded, “It is therefore sent in circulation. I request that instead of writing ‘meeting’ in this you will write your opinion.” Defendants Nos. 1, 4 and 6 are proved to have assented to the course. The fifth defendant died after suit, and defendants Nos. 7, 8 and 9 were not in office at the date of suspension. The third defendant on receipt of Exhibit B-1 sent an answer (Exhibit C) in which he stated “It is not legal to take this step by circulation, much less by taking individual opinions as you are now doing. The procedure adopted is wrong from beginning to end; I request you therefore to call a meeting for the purpose.” Ignoring this request the second defendant wrote to the plaintiff the letter (Exhibit A-1) in which he stated that the plaintiff had been suspended for the reasons set forth in the accompanying proceedings order and asked him to hand over to another of the trustees. The proceedings (Exhibit A-1) recorded the opinion of the majority that the plaintiff should be suspended and disclosed the fact that the matter had been dealt with in circulation. Now the temple committee are a statutory body to which the powers formerly exercised by the Board of Revenue under Regulation VII of 1817 have been transferred as regards certain temples by the Religious Endowments Act and these powers, it may now be taken as settled, include a power of suspending or dismissing the temple trustees for sufficient cause. It has, however, been held that is exercising these powers they are to a large extent in the position of a Corporation and that their actions must be tried by the same tests. Now it is well settled that the ordinary way for bodies in the position of a corporation to transact their business is at a meeting; and, assuming that it is open to them to transact some of their business in circulation, I thick they have no such power as regards matters such as suspension, or dismissal of freehold officers under their superintendence as to which their authority must be strictly pursued: Rex v. Taylor, Rex v. Sutton, Thandavaraya Pillai v. Subbayyar, and Ponnambala Pillai v. Muthu Chettiar. Even if the matter could properly have been dealt with in circulation, that could only have been by consent of all members, and any one of them would have had the right to insist; on the matter being dealt with at a meeting, as the third defendant endeavoured to do in this case. See the observations of Page Wood, V.C, in Hallows v. Fernie, which were approved by Sterling, J., in In re Great Northern Salt and Chemical Works, Ex parte Kennedy. Here there was not even what is ordinarily known as circulation, as the second defendant merely sent copies of his proposals to each of the other members and obtained their individual assents to his proposals. In these circumstances we are clearly of opinion that the action of the committee in suspending the plaintiff was ultra vires.

It is then said that we ought to enquire whether there were valid grounds for suspending the plaintiff and, if so, to dismiss his suit. Certain observations of Mr. Justice Shephard in Seshadri Ayyangar v. Nataraja Ayyar were referred to, but these observations appear to have been obiter and no authority was cited. There are similar observations by Mr. Justice Sundara Ayyar in Seshadri Aiyangar v. Ranga Bhattar. The case cited by him—The King v. Mayor, etc., of London—is no authority that this is a good answer to a suit, as in that case the Court merely refused to issue the discretionary writ of mandamus and observed that

“no case has been cited to show that an assize will not lie for such an office as the present; or that he could not maintain an action for money had and received during his suspension.”

Further the office with which Mr. Justice Sundara Ayyar was dealing was that of archaka and other considerations may possibly apply to it. On the other hand in Willis v. Sir G. Gipps, the Privy Council recommended that an order of amotion made without due notice should be set aside, although they at the same time reported that there were sufficient grounds for making the order. We are therefore of opinion that it would not be a good answer to the present suit to show that there were sufficient grounds for suspending the plaintiff. In this view it is unnecessary to consider the further objection that the plaintiff was removed without due notice, as we have held that the action was ultra vires on the other ground.

As regards the liability of the defendants or some of them for damages, there can be no doubt that the decision of a Bench of three judges sitting on the original side in Vijaya Ragava v. Secretary of State for India is authority at any rate for the proposition that a person in the enjoyment of a public office who in wrongfully removed is ordinarily entitled to damages from the authority removing him. In Seshadri Ayyangar v. Nataraja Ayyar a trustee who was illegally suspended recovered Rs. 1,000 against the temple committee, Collins, C.J, being influenced by the fact that the committee was actuated by an indirect motive, the fact that the plaintiff was a vadagalai. In ??? Pillai v. Subbayyar the plaintiff recovered damages before the District Munsif, and to this extent the decree seems to have been reversed by the District Judge, and the plaintiff did not appeal. As early as Syed Amin Sahib v. Ibram Sahib, it seems to have been assumed that damages might be recovered by a temple trustee for wrongful dismissal. On the other hand there does not seem to be any instance of an action of this kind having been successfully maintained in England. In The King v. Mayor, etc., of London already cited, the suggested remedies of the removed officer were an assize or an action for money had and received to his use during the period of suspension, and not an action against the corporation for wrongfully suspending him; aid in O'good v. Nelson it was thought well for the removed officer to proceed by action for money had and received against his successor. In Harman v. Tappenden, where a freeman of the corporation was alleged to have been illegally removed from his office, it was held that an action did not lie against individual corporators for acts erroneously done by them in their corporate capacity, at least not without proof of malice. This case was relied on by Kelly, C.B in Mill v. Hawkar, who held that for a tort committed by a corporation it could only be sued as a body. On the other hand Cleasby and Plgott, BB., held that the individual members who exceeded their authority by ordering a trespass to the plaintiffs' land were liable in damages. In Mill v. Hawker, the same case in the Exchequer Chamber, Blackburn, J., said that the question whether the corporators were liable was one of considerable importance and great difficulty. It would, he said, require time for consideration and probably the decision would not be unanimous. Accordingly he declined to decide it at that stage, and it has not been decided since in any English case. It had however long previously been ruled by the House of Lords in a Scotch appeal, Ferguson v. Kinnoull, that where the law imposes a duty on any person or body of persons and they fail or neglect to perform that duty they are answerable in damages to those whom their failure or neglect injures. The appeal was from Scotland, but the judgments proceeded on grounds common to the laws of England and Scotland, as was expressly stated, and they contain general expressions which are rather in favour of extending liability of individual corporators at any rate to cases of excess of jurisdiction such as the present. It is also to be observed that it has been held by the Judicial Committee on appeal from India in Calder v. Halket, that even judicial acts at any rate of inferior Courts are actionable, in the absence of statutory provision, if done wholly without jurisdiction. Ferguson v. Kinnoull is also important because it lays down that it is only corporators who are parties to the failure or neglect of duty who can be held answerable in damages. It is also clear that section 14 of the Religious Endowments Act contemplates that members of temple committees should be sued individually in cases under that section. On the whole, it does not appear that the Madras cases are oppose to any settled rule of English Law, or that there is sufficient reason for calling them in question.

As regards damages it is not shown that the plaintiff sustained any substantial damage by reason of the suspension though it was of course annoying to have the suspension tomtommed in the neighbourhood. On the whole we assess the damages at Rs. 50 and reverse the decision of the lower Court and give the plaintiff a declaration that his suspension was illegal and a decree against defendants Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 6 who must be considered as parties to the saspension, for Rs. 50 damages and for costs hero and below calculated on that amount.

N.R