Foreign judgment execution appeal allowed under Section 44A, CPC. Burden of proof not met by judgment-debtors.

The court allowed the appeal for the execution of a foreign judgment under Section 44A, CPC. It found that the judgment-debtors had the opportunity to contest the judgment in English courts but did not do so, indicating the judgment was given on the merits. The court emphasized the regularity of judicial acts and held that the burden to prove the judgment was not on its merits lay with the judgment-debtors, who failed to do so. The matter was remitted to the District Judge for further proceedings in accordance with the law.

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Issues: Whether the foreign decree sought to be executed under Section 44A of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 was hit by Section 13(b) of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 on the ground that it had not been given on the merits of the case.

Analysis: The judgment-debtors sought to resist execution by contending that the English decree was not on the merits because they were absent at the hearing and no evidence was shown to have been taken. The Court held that mere absence of the defendants, when they had notice of the proceeding and chose not to appear, did not by itself deprive the decree of its character as one on the merits. The presumption that judicial acts are regularly performed applied, and in the absence of evidence to rebut that presumption, the contention that no evidence was taken could not succeed. The controversy raised in the action had been directly adjudicated upon, and the burden under Section 44A(3) lay on the judgment-debtors to establish that the decree fell within the exception in Section 13(b).

Conclusion: The decree was not shown to fall within the exception in Section 13(b), and execution could not be refused on the ground that it was not given on the merits of the case.

Ratio Decidendi: A foreign decree is not excluded from execution merely because it was passed in the absence of the defendant, if the underlying controversy was directly adjudicated upon and the judgment-debtor fails to discharge the burden of showing that the decree was not on the merits.

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