TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2015 (4) TMI 1286
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....6th July, 2012 and registered Gift Deed dated 14th May, 2009 in favour of defendant No.l with respect to property bearing No.5/3, First Floor, East Patel Nagar, New Delhi, are null and void. Plaintiff also seeks injunction restraining defendants from transferring or creating third party rights in property bearing No.3/3, East Patel Nagar, New Delhi and 5/3, (First Floor), East Patel Nagar, New Delhi. 3. Mr. Vinay Kumar Garg, learned senior counsel for the plaintiff stated that the plaintiff in depression due to huge losses suffered by him as a consequence of a fire incident in his warehouse, had transferred all his assets in favour of defendants and also took divorce from defendant No.1 by mutual consent. 4. Mr. Garg further stated th....
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....the Defendant No.1 by mutual consent. However, it is a fact that neither the Plaintiff nor the Defendant No.1 ever had any dispute or intention to end their marital relationship nor did the Plaintiff ever intended to actually transfer the right, title or interest in any of his properties in the name of any of the Defendants...... xxx xxx xxx 11. ............It is also a matter of fact that the Plaintiff never intended to divorce the Defendant No.1 and even the Defendant No.1 never intended to put her marital relationship with the Plaintiff to an end. Even after the decree of divorce dated 06.05.2013, the Plaintiff and the Defendant No.1 continued to live together as husband and wife........ xxx xxx xxx 13. That the P....
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....is of sworn affidavits that the plaintiff had not been cohabitating with his wife since 01st March, 2011, the plaintiff cannot today contend that he has never lived separately from defendant No.1-wife. 12. In fact, upon a reading of the plaint and the documents filed, this Court finds that plaintiff has played fraud upon the Court and is equally at fault and the principle of in pari delicto is clearly applicable to the present case. 13. In Black's Law Dictionary, Tenth Edition, in pari delicto has been defined as "the principle that a plaintiff who has participated in wrongdoing may not recover damages resulting from the wrongdoing". 14. It is settled law that when parties to a legal controversy are in pari delicto neither can ....
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....cannot allow the defendant to be heard in a Court of Justice to say that his own deed is to be avoided by his own fraud;" and Holroyd, J., added that "a deed may be avoided on the ground of fraud, but then the objection must come from a person neither party nor privy to it, for no man can allege his own fraud in order to invalidate his own deed". This decision has, however, been commented on by Taylor in his "Law of Evidence". According to Taylor "it seems now clearly settled that a party is not estopped by his deed from avoiding it by proving that it was executed for a fraudulent, illegal or immoral purpose." The learned Author then refers to the case of Roberts and adds "in the subsequent case of Prole v. Wiggins Sir Nicholas Tin....
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....e same effect is the opinion of Story "In general, where parties are concerned in illegal agreements or other transactions, whether they are mala prohibita or mala in se, Courts of Equity following the rule of law as to participators in a common crime will not interpose to grant any relief, acting upon the known maxim In pari delicto potior est conditio defendentis et posidentis. The old cases often gave relief, both at law and inequity, where the party would otherwise derive an advantage from his inequity. But the modern doctrine has adopted a more severely just and probably politic and moral rule, which is to leave the parties where it finds them giving no relief and no countenance to claims of this sort". In judicial decisions w....