Delay in filing documents is not enough to bar production; courts should prefer costs over denying substantive opportunity.

Delay in filing additional documents is not, by itself, a sufficient ground to refuse their production when their relevance can be tested in evidence. The trial court and High Court were found to have erred in shutting out the documents altogether under Order VIII Rule 1 CPC, because procedural rules should advance justice rather than defeat it. The proper response to delay is ordinarily to impose costs, not to deny a party the opportunity to place material on record. The defendants were therefore entitled to produce the additional documents, and the orders refusing that opportunity were set aside.

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Issues: Whether the defendants should be permitted to file additional documents despite delay, and whether refusal to receive such documents was justified under Order VIII Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

Analysis: The refusal by the trial court and the High Court was held to be legally erroneous. The relevance of the documents could be examined by the trial court on the evidence to be led, and mere delay in filing the documents was not a sufficient ground to shut out production altogether. Procedural rules were treated as instruments to advance justice, and the proper course in a case of delay would be to impose costs rather than deny a party the opportunity to place documents on record.

Conclusion: The defendants were entitled to produce the additional documents, and the impugned orders refusing that opportunity were set aside.

Ratio Decidendi: Delay in filing documents, by itself, is not a sufficient ground to refuse their production when the documents can be tested in evidence, and procedural defaults should ordinarily be addressed by costs rather than by denial of substantive opportunity.

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