Company plaint signing by authorised attorney is valid; procedural rules must be read together, not as excluding company authorisation.
A company may validly authorise a person holding a power of attorney to sign a plaint on its behalf. Order XXIX, Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure is permissive and identifies persons who may sign and verify pleadings for a corporation, but it does not exclude the operation of Order VI, Rule 14. Read together, the provisions permit a company to have its plaint signed by a duly authorised person where the company cannot sign in its own name. On that construction, the plaint was properly signed and the order striking it off the file was technically incorrect.
Issues: Whether a plaint filed by a company was validly signed by a person duly authorised by power of attorney, and whether Order VI, Rule 14 and Order XXIX, Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, should be read as permitting such signature.
Analysis: Order XXIX, Rule 1 is permissive and enables a corporation to have pleadings signed and verified by the persons named therein, but it does not exclude the operation of Order VI, Rule 14. The latter applies to a company as a party, and where a company cannot sign in its own name, the proviso allows signature by a person duly authorised to sign on its behalf. The provisions were therefore construed together so that a company may authorise a person to sign a plaint, and Order XXIX, Rule 1 does not operate as a mandatory restriction on that mode of signature.
Conclusion: The plaint was validly signed and the order taking it off the file was technically wrong.
TaxTMI 
AI Drafter ✕
TaxTMI 
