Jahanvi Agarwal
Recently, the Bombay High Court reacted to Senior lawyer Jayesh Patel’s behavior by making his junior take responsibility for a case’s rejection.
The Division bench consisting of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Arif Doctor directed Advocate Patel to gift ‘Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation’ by Granville Austin to the junior as a goodwill gesture after his apology was accepted.
The Court further observed that the senior was in favor of the suggested course of action.
The Court was deliberating a temporary plea submitted by Patel to reinstate an appeal that had been denied because the appellant, Memon Co-operative Bank, failed to appear.
The application noted that Patel was unaware of the situation since his inexperienced attorney neglected to advise him of it.
Less than two months have passed since the junior’s enrollment as an advocate, according to the court, which dismissed the appeal on that date.
The Court objected to Patel placing the blame on the junior attorney, who was also required to provide an affidavit outlining the junior’s error.
The Court recorded in its 6-page order that:
“We find it most unfortunate that the appellant’s advocate-on-record has sought to lay the blame for non-appearance at the hands of a junior advocate. What is worse still is that the said junior advocate has been made to file an affidavit stating that the inadvertence was at her end.”
The appellant’s lawyer, Raj Patel, apologized to the court when it expressed its unhappiness and promised that the junior’s name would be removed from the record.
He explained to the court that since the Bank had carefully pursued the appeal before it was dismissed for non-appearance, one more chance had to be granted.
Mr. Sathe, the Counsel for Respondent No.2, submitted that the Interim Application had been filed in the most cavalier and casual manner. He pointed out that the deponent of the Interim Application had in the Affidavit in Support deposed to facts which had occurred prior to his joining the employment of the Applicant/Appellant as being to his personal knowledge.
The Court decided to reinstate the appeal after carefully considering all of the arguments.
However, the Court ordered Jayesh Patel to give a copy of “The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation by Granville Austin” to his underlying attorney instead of charging costs. The Court decided to reinstate the appeal after carefully considering all of the arguments.
The order stated that:
“In the facts of the present case, especially in view of what we have observed in Paragraphs 3 and 4 above, it would be apposite that instead of granting costs in the conventional sense, that the learned Advocate on record for the Appellant gift a copy of ‘The Indian Constitution : Cornerstone of a Nation by Granville Austin’ to the learned junior Advocate, whose name finds mentioned in Paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Interim Application. This, in our view, would serve as a gesture of goodwill and erase any misunderstanding or ill will that may have occurred in the mind of learned junior Advocate, whose name finds mentioned in Paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Interim Application.”
Case Name: The Memon Co-operative Bank Ltd. v. Rajan Ramchand Gera & Anr.
Diary Number: 2273/ 2023
Bench: Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Arif Doctor