Document Fragment View

Matching Fragments

835
"The provisions of this section (section 35) which allow a document to be admitted in evidence on payment of penalty, have no application when the original document, which was unstamped or was insufficiently stamped, has not been produced- and, accordingly, secondary evidence of its contents cannot be given. To hold otherwise would be to add to the Act a provision which it does not contain. Payment of penalty will not render secondary evidence admissible, for under the stamp law penalty is leviable only on an unstamped or insufficiently stamped document actually produced in Court and that law does not provide for the levy of any penalty on lost documents", Therefore the question is whether the award which was sent by the arbitrator to the court is the original instrument or a copy thereof. There cannot, in our opinion, be any doubt that it is the original and not a copy of the award. What the arbitrator did was to prepare the award in triplicate, sign all of them and send one each to the party and the third to the court. This would be an original instrument, and the words, "certified copy" appearing thereon are a mis- description and cannot have the effect of altering the true character of the instrument. There is no substance in this contention of the appellant either. In the result, the appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.