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It is contended that this was obviously a champertous agreement, and the respondents were only gambling in litigation. Learned counsel for the respondents has, on the other hand, urged that the respondents had agreed to pay half the price of half the property to the appellants in case of their success. They were not taking any undue advantage and that the agreement was therefore not unlawful. We have given due consideration to the arguments of both the parties. It may be observed that the agreement between the parties was undoubtedly champertous in character. In Wharton's Law Lexicon, champerty has been explained as meaning "a bargain between a plaintiff or defendant In a suit and a third person, campum partire, to divide between them the land or other matter sued for in the event of the litigant being successful in the suit, whereupon the champertor is to carry on his party's suit or action at his own expense."

In the present case, the respondents, on their own showing, had agreed to bear all the expenses of the appeals and to divide the property half and half in case of success. The contract between the parties was therefore clearly one of champerty and there appears no room for any doubt on that point. We shall discuss at a later stage as to what was the effect of the respondents agreeing with the appellants that they would pay half the price of the property in the event of their success.

It may however be observed here in favour of the respondents that although agreements involving champerty are illegal according to English Law, all such contracts are not necessarily illegal in India and, therefore, the Courts cannot strike down every such contract simply because it is one of champerty. Champertous agreements in India have been held void only when they are considered opposed to public policy on account of their being extortionate and unconscionable or if they are made for improper objects as gambling in litigation or injuring or oppressing others by abetting and encouraging unrighteous suits.

In the case of Ram Cooniar Coondoo v. Chunder Canto Mookerjee, 4 Ind App 23 (PC) (A) their Lordships reviewed a number of decisions of the various High Courts in India and also two earlier decisions of the Privy Council and then they proceeded to observe as follows:

"The result of the authorities, then appears to be that the English laws of maintenance and champerty are not of force as specified laws in India; and the decisions to this effect appear to their Lordships to rest on sound principles....."
"But whilst their Lordships hold that the specific English law of maintenance and champerty has not been introduced into India, it seems clear to them upon the authorities that contracts of this character ought under certain circumstances to be held to be invalid, as being against public policy. Some of the circumstances which would tend to render them so have been adverted to in the two judgments of this tribunal already cited."
"Their Lordships think it may properly be inferred from the decisions above referred to, and especially those of this tribunal, that a fair agreement to supply funds to carry on a suit in consideration of having a share of the property, if recovered, ought not to be regarded as being, per se, opposed to public policy. Indeed, cases may be easily supposed in which it would be in furtherance of right and justice, and necessary to resist oppression, that a suitor who had a just title to property, and no means except the property itself, should be assisted in this manner."