Limitation for abortive arbitration proceedings: time could not be excluded under Section 14, leaving the suit time-barred.

Time spent in abortive arbitration proceedings could not be excluded under Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1908, because that provision applies to civil proceedings in a court of first instance or appeal, not to arbitration before an arbitrator. After the Arbitration Act, 1940, the limitation scheme was governed by Section 37, which applied the Limitation Act to arbitrations and allowed only the narrow exclusion under Section 37(5) where the statutory conditions were met. As no award was set aside and no order declared the arbitration agreement ineffective, the suit remained time-barred.

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Issues: Whether time spent in abortive arbitration proceedings could be excluded under Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1908, so as to save the suit from limitation, or only within the limited scope of Section 37(5) of the Arbitration Act, 1940.

Analysis: Section 14, on its plain language, applies to another civil proceeding prosecuted in a court of first instance or in a court of appeal, and not to proceedings before an arbitrator. The earlier Privy Council approach applied the limitation principle to arbitration by analogy, but that reasoning could not displace the statutory scheme after the Arbitration Act, 1940. Section 37(1) expressly applied the Limitation Act to arbitrations, and Section 37(5) provided a specific and limited exclusion of time only where the statutory conditions were satisfied, namely an award being set aside or an order declaring the arbitration agreement to have ceased to have effect. Since the arbitration proceedings in question were merely abortive and no qualifying order had been made, the time could not be excluded.

Conclusion: The suit was barred by limitation and the plaintiff was not entitled to exclude the time spent in the arbitration proceedings under Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1908.

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