Don't seek action against lawyers on their failure to get orders: Madras HC

Chennai: The Madras high court has observed that the role of advocates is to espouse the cause of litigants, who entrust their case with them, and it is not a healthy practice to seek action against them on their failure to obtain an order in a particular manner as proposed by the litigants.

Justice S. Vaidyanathan made the observation while dismissing a review petition filed by Gopalram, who appeared as party-in-person, at the SR stage itself as not maintainable.

“When the matter was heard, the party-in-person has submitted that he had made several complaints against sitting judges. Since such statement is irrelevant to the present context, it can be presumed that it is a kind of threat posed to me, as in the event of an order being not passed to his liking, he will exercise the same trick of making complaint against me also”, the judge added.

The judge said on account of matrimonial discord, Gopalram filed a petition for divorce before a family court and his wife filed a petition for restitution of conjugal rights. While they were pending, she filed an application for interim maintenance and the family court directed him to pay Rs 3,000 per month. Aggrieved, he approached the Madras high court, which reduced the maintenance from Rs 3,000 to Rs 2,000. While so, contending that his wife and her lawyer had suppressed the fact that divorce was already granted before the court, he had filed a review application. Subsequently, he filed another review application to take action against his wife and three advocates, who appeared for him and his wife. One of the advocates was now the sitting judge of this court. The high court had dismissed the petition by imposing a cost of Rs 25,000 for making frivolous and baseless allegations against the advocates, against which, he filed the present review applications, the judge added.

Not convinced about the maintainability of the review petition, the judge said even assuming that the present review applications were maintainable, a thorough reading of the entire pleadings put forth by the party-in-person would unfold that there was no substance or merit in the averments raised in support of these applications, except making vague hue and cry and making bald allegations against his erstwhile counsel.

The judge said the main intention of the party-in-person was to file review petitions one after the other without legally satisfying the court on merit with regard to the maintainability of the petitions and somehow attempts to obtain an order in his favour. A cursory glance at the order to be reviewed would go to show that there was no error or mistake apparent on the face of record, the judge added.