1935 (12) TMI 15
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....dmittedly the owner of the land) letting it first to Naran, and Naran then letting it to defendant 1. A number of defences were raised but were overruled, and the execution of a registered lease was ordered. In this second appeal by defendant 1 four points are urged; (1) that the plaintiff firm consists in fact of more than twenty members, and, therefore, under section 4, Companies Act, it cannot be recognized for want of registration of the company and cannot bring this suit; (2) that the agreement upon which the plaintiffs rely was not so much an agreement for a lease as an actual lease, and it is void for want of writing and registration under section 107, Transfer of Property Act; (3) that the agreement is indefinite in its terms, and both for this reason and because three years have elapsed from the time when it became enforceable (assuming that it was enforceable) it cannot now be enforced, and (4) that defendant 1 is himself a member of the firm with whom the agreement was executed and thus occupies the position both of plaintiff and of defendant, and therefore the present suit is bad. On the first point there is no direct authority applicable to the present case in th....
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....what the section prohibited was an unregistered association of more than twenty individuals* It is argued that on the analogy of this case the sub-partners of the two members of the Vishnu Cotton Ginning Factory must be regarded as individual members of the Bavla Vishnu Cotton Ginning Factory. The determination of the question depends upon the position of sub-partners. The point was raised at a late stage in the trial after all the evidence had been taken, and there is no evidence to show exactly what part the sub-partners took in the business. But as they have been described as sub-partners, it is reasonable to take it that they were in fact what is usually meant by a sub-partner. A sub-partner is described in Lindley on Partnership, Edn. 10, at p. 66: he is a stranger who agrees with one of the partners of the firm to share the profits derived by that partner from the firm, and it is said by the learned author that this arrangement does not make the stranger a partner in the original firm but constitutes what is called a sub-partnership which in no way affects the other members of the principal firm. A case is cited in which a certain person agreed with one of the partners in ....
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....In Ariff v. Jadunath Majumdar, (58 LA. 91) the facts were almost exactly the same, the only difference being that it was a suit in ejectment in which the defendant pleaded a right under an agreement of lease. It was held that as there was no lease by means of a registered document as required by section 107, Transfer of Property Act, the plaintiff was entitled to eject the defendant, but that had the defendant been within time (which on the facts of that case he was not), it would have been open to him to sue for specific performance of the verbal agreement for a lease and in the meantime to ask for the plaintiff's ejectment suit to be stayed. That was a case where under an oral agreement for a lease the defendant was put into immediate possession of the property, just as the plaintiff was put into immediate possession of the property here. It is then contended that the agreement is indefinite. The evidence is unsatisfactory; but nevertheless both the Courts below have come to a definite conclusion as to the main terms of the agreement, namely that it was to be for an annual rent of Rs. 308-12-0 and for a term of fifty-one years. As regards the formal lease, it is held that no d....
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.... of the money but for a declaration that that member of the firm in the taking of the partnership accounts was entitled to credit of the sum in dispute. This question does not seem to have been considered at all by the learned Assistant Judge before whom the present appeal was brought, and it may be that the matter was not raised in this Court; but it was raised in the trial Court, and the equitable principle referred to in Rustomji v. Seth Purshotamdas, (25 Bona. L.R. 306) was considered but I think misunderstood. I do not think that the learned Judges who decided Rustomji v. Seth Purshotamdas, (25 Bom. L.R. 606) would have extended the equitable principle to cover a case as the present, which cannot be adequately dealt with merely by a declaration of a right to a credit on the partnership accounts. It is contended on the other side that O. 30, rule 9, Civil P. C, contemplates suits between a member of a firm and the firm of which he is a member, and that if a suit of the present kind cannot be included among the suits dealt with in rule 9, then there is no remedy for the aggrieved party. rule 9 merely says that O. 30 (which deals with suits by or against corporations) shall ap....
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