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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.