Straight, J.:— Musammat Jani Begam, the fourth plaintiff in the suit, is the only appellant before us as assignee for a consideration of Rs. 5,000 of a share of Rs. 10,000 out of Rs. 20,000 claimed by the other plaintiffs on account of the dower-debt alleged to be due from the defendant to Musammat Jafri Begam, deceased, the daughter of plaintiff No. 1, and sister of plaintiffs Nos. 2 and 3. It may be taken as established that by a sale-deed of the 18th December, 1885, the appellant, for a sum of Rs. 5,000 then paid, [479] purchased the rights of plaintiffs Nos. 1, 2 and 3, as heirs of Jafri Begam to recover Rs. 10,000 from the defendant. The present suit was instituted on the 22nd of December, 1885, and the single question with which we are concerned in appeal is whether the Court below was right in holding the appellant barred from recovering more than Rs. 5,000, the price paid by her for the Rs. 10,000 of the debt, by the provisions of s. 135 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882. In support of the appeal that he was not, our attention has been called to Grish Chandra v. Kashisauri Debi, and no doubt that is an authority directly in point. I regret, however, that upon careful consideration, I am unable to concur with the views of the learned Judges who were parties to that decision. With great deference it seems to me that they overlooked the object with which s. 135 was framed, namely, the prevention of speculation in actionable claims, or, in other words, the buying cheap the right of action of one person against another. Clause (d) of s. 135, to which the learned Judges refer in support of their view, appears to me to suggest an entirely different inference to that drawn by them. As I read it, what it means is that, if a creditor or party having an actionable claim against another, has put into Court and has proceeded to proof of it to the point at which judgment has been delivered affirming it, or the liability of the defendant has been so clearly established that judgment must be delivered against him, then the mischief or danger of any trafficking or speculation in litigation disappears, and the defendant can suffer no prejudice by any arrangement between the plaintiff and a third person as to who is to enjoy the fruits of the decree, nor is there any probability that the process of the Court will be misused. On the other band, if a person hiving an actionable claim against another, chooses to sell it cheap, or for less than its actual value, the person who buys undoubtedly embarks more or less in a speculation, which admittedly and on the plain terms of s. 135 can be defeated before suit brought by payment to him of the price paid for it with interest and incidental expenses. If the law in such circumstances places him at that disadvantage, why should his position be a higher and better one because the party said to be liable to the claim, says—Prove the case in Court, and you the [480] assignee, prove what you paid for the interest in it, on the strength of which you set up your right? What greater morality is there in the status of the assignee after suit and decree than before? I confess I can see none, nor do I think that the Legislature intended to inflict a penalty on a person against whom an actionable claim might subsist in the hands of an assignee, by making him forfeit a right he would otherwise have had, because he puts such assignee to proof of the kind I have indicated. Moreover, this absurdity would arise, that the assignee might exact a false price, and so drive such person into Court, and yet if the latter proved the true price, he could not be ordered to pay that, but would have to satisfy the whole claim. I need only add that the principle which is embodied in s. 135 of the Transfer of Property Act is very fully and clearly stated in ss. 1048 to 1057, inclusive of Story's Equity Jurisprudence by Grigsby, ed. 1884, which provision, following on the cases decided by their Lordships of the Privy Council of Chedambara Chetty v. Renqa K.M.V Puchaiya Naickar, and Ram Coomar Coondoo v. Chunder Canto Mookerjee, shows that the Legislature intended by statutory enactment to adopt the dootrine of champerty recognised by the English Courts. The present case was essentially one to my mind in which the plaintiff-appellant's proceedings came within the mischief contemplated by s. 135, and holding the Subordinate Judge's view to have been right for the reasons I have given, I would dismiss the appeal with costs.
Tyrrell, J.:— I concur.
Appeal dismissed.