Calcutta High Court
Ram Rotton Mundul vs Netro Kally Dassee And Anr. on 1 January, 1800
Equivalent citations: (1879)ILR 4CAL339
JUDGMENT Jackson, J.
1. In this case it appears to us that both the Courts below are in error. The Subordinate Judge, no doubt, was wrong in holding that the suit itself was a sufficient notice to quit. The Judge who corrects that impression is himself inaccurate in his statement of the ruling of the Full Bench case, Rajendro Nath Mookhopadhya v. Bassider Buhman Khondkhar I.L.R., 2 Cal., 146; and he goes on to commit a further error in the reasons which he substitutes for those given by the Court below. This Court did not hold that a ryot simpliciter can claim to have a suit dismissed on the ground that he received no notice to quit, but a more restricted proposition, viz., that a ryot whose holding is of such a nature that he cannot ho ejected without a reasonable notice to quit at the end of the year, is entitled to have the landlord's suit dismissed on the ground that he had received no such notice. The Judge goes on to say: "The proceedings in the Criminal Court under Section 530 may, however, be considered in the light of a notice to quit." This observation of the Judge, Mr. Bell, who appears for the respondent, very properly declines to support. The Judge also observes that he considers that notice to quit by letter is sufficiently proved by the plaintiff's. No doubt he does, but it is also proved at the same time that the notice was only a notice of ten days, and terminated on the 25th of the month of Jeyt. Now, assuming, as we must assume in this case, that the defendant is at least a yearly tenant, ho certainly falls within the purview of Mr. Justice Markby's reference to the Full Bench in the case of Rajendro Nath Mookhopadhya v. Bassider Bukman Khondkhar I.L.R., 2 Cal, 146. It is clear that a notice running for ten days, and terminating on the 25th Jeyt, does not, in either of the two essential respects, fulfil the requirements of the law. That being so, and this case resembling very nearly another which was decided by this Bench when Mr. Justice Kennedy was a member of it, in the month of January last, we think that the judgment of the lower Courts must be set aside and the plaintiffs' suit dismissed. The plaintiffs, no doubt, may serve a proper notice, and then the defendant of course will be liable to ejectment.
2. The appeal is allowed with costs.