Professional misconduct in court boycott during hartal accepted as legal practitioners' absence from client work was unjustified

Acceptance of a vakalatnama ordinarily obliges a pleader to appear and conduct the case unless there is a lawful discharge, an agreement to the contrary, or a genuinely unavoidable absence. Mere non-payment of fees or general inconvenience does not justify abstention, and a voluntary boycott of the courts is not a valid excuse. Where legal practitioners stayed away during a hartal intended to paralyse judicial work, the conduct was treated as grossly improper and within the disciplinary provisions governing misconduct of legal practitioners. The conduct was found to amount to professional misconduct, but no further disciplinary action was taken in the references as a matter of leniency.

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Issues: Whether legal practitioners who abstained from attending court during a hartal, thereby neglecting client work and impairing the administration of justice, were guilty of professional misconduct under the Legal Practitioners Act, 1879, and whether the Court should take disciplinary action against them.

Analysis: Acceptance of a vakalatnama ordinarily places a pleader under an obligation to appear and conduct the case unless there is an agreement to the contrary or a lawful and properly communicated discharge. Mere non-payment of fees or a general claim of inconvenience does not, by itself, justify absence. A pleader may avoid attendance only if the absence is genuinely compelled by overriding circumstances beyond his control and is not a voluntary acquiescence in a boycott of the Courts. The Court found that the abstention in these references was not justified by real fear or necessity, but was connected with a hartal whose object was to boycott the Courts and paralyse judicial work. Such conduct was held to fall within the disciplinary provisions dealing with grossly improper conduct and misconduct of legal practitioners.

Conclusion: The conduct of the pleaders was found to amount to professional misconduct, but the Court decided, as a matter of leniency, to take no further disciplinary action in these references.

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