Legal News & Views

A lawyer who gives a legal opinion cannot be charged in a criminal case in the absence of evidence that she actively perpetrated the fraud, the Bombay High Court has ruled. Two years after city-based advocate Mohana Nair (60) was charged by the CBI with forgery and fraud over an opinion she gave in a housing loan case, a division bench of Justice S C Dharmadhikari and Justice Gautam Patel quashed the case against her, calling it "entirely frivolous, thoroughly vexatious and undeniably oppressive". The court also slammed the investigating agency for targeting the advocate. "Unless we find that there is at least a prima facie case against an advocate who gave an opinion-a 'best judgment assessment', as it were, based on her knowledge of the law, her appreciation of the facts and her reading of the documents-that she played an active role in the fraud alleged, we cannot but conclude that there is no case to be made out against that advocate," said the ju...

Apex court verdict upholding Bombay high court ruling is a jolt to developers in the state. This is good news for those who have bought property between June 2006 and March 2010. The Supreme Court on Thursday said Value Added Tax (VAT) cannot be imposed on buyers. This has come as a jolt to builders in the state who wanted 1% tax instead of 5% imposed by the state government in 2006. They were recovering the VAT amount from buyers. Justice RM Lodha upheld the Bombay high court order that VAT cannot be imposed on buyers. “The value of goods which can constitute the amount to be taxed has to be the value of the goods at the time of incorporation of goods in the works even though property in goods pass later. Taxing the sale of goods element in a works contract is permissible even after incorporation of goods provided tax is directed to the value of goods at the time of incorporation and does not purport to tax the transfer of immovable property,” the court observed. The court also direc...

Reliance Communications Ltd has been directed by a consumer forum here to pay Rs 10,000 to one of its subscribers as compensation for its "malpractice" of changing his tariff plan without his consent. The East District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum also held that Reliance Communications, being a private service provider, is not a telegraph authority and hence, it cannot avail the immunity available under a Supreme Court verdict exempting telegraph authorities from the purview of Consumer Protection Act in telecom matters. A bench headed by N A Zaidi said the matter was "a clear cut case of malpractice thriving in the telecom industry at the hands of the service providers like the respondent (RCL)" as the telecom major could not show the TRAI circular on the basis of which it had arbitrarily changed its subscriber's tariff plan. As Reliance had "erred to file" the TRAI circular to defend its action, the forum observed that "it is farcical t...

IDBI Bank will have to pay compensation of Rs 3.22 lakh to a Pune man after it lost the original sale deed of his property, which he had submitted while procuring a home loan in 2003. The complainant, Captain Vikrant Apandkar, had sought the document after foreclosing the loan in 2007. "He has been continuously making efforts to obtain the original documents. The bank disowned its stand in locating and dispatching the original document to the complainant for quite a long time. The complainant was subjected to unnecessary correspondence and follow-up since he had availed the loan in 2003," said the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission. Apandkar had earlier filed a complaint against the bank in the district forum. But on May 31, 2012, when the forum dismissed the complaint on the grounds that it was filed late, he filed an appeal in the state commission. In the appeal, Apandkar said that on June 30, 2007, the bank issued him a no-dues certificate, b...

At a time when land is at a premium in Mumbai and land-grabbing a common occurrence, the Bombay HC, in an order, has ruled that the state government can take over land if a property does not have any legal heirs or beneficiaries. Forty-four years after a man died without any heirs, leaving behind a 5,143-sq m plot in Ghatkopar, the HC directed that the state be included as a party in the land dispute. In 1944, Kashinath Sawant bought the Ghatkopar land. He died in 1969 without any heirs. Neelkanth housing society said it was the owner as the developer who constructed the building had purchased the plot. Bhuwaneshwar Tripathi has staked claim saying he was a tenant in the chawl on the land. "If the trial court finds that the property's last known lawful owner has not left any legal heir, descendant, rightful nominee or beneficiary, it would vest in the state government," said Justice A P Bhangale. "In the case in hand, if the trial court finds it necessary to app...

Non-listing of a disease in the ‘recommended diseases’ list cannot be a ground for rejection of insurance claim, the Madras High Court has ruled. “Once a person is validly covered by a health insurance scheme and he has taken treatment at an accredited hospital, he cannot be denied reimbursement of the cost of treatment on the ground that the ailment has not been included in the ‘recommended diseases’ list for reimbursement,’’ Justice T Raja observed while allowing a writ plea from G Simon Christudoss. Accepting the arguments of advocate D Prasanna that a school employee had been unfairly denied reimbursement of costs involved in his eye surgery conducted at a city hospital, the judge said it was not open to the DEO, the competent authority, to say that the employee was not entitled for reimbursement of medical expenses as the disease he suffered from was not shown as one of the diseases on the list. The approach of the officer was unreasonable, the judge said. Christudoss, an ass...

A power company cannot unilaterally change a consumer's electricity meter because it suspects the instrument is defective, the Bombay high court has ruledin an important order. Putting the reins on power companies, Justice Ashok Bhangale, while hearing a two-decade-old case, said that if there was a dispute about the working of a meter, in the absence of allegations of fraud against the consumer, the matter has to be referred to the electricity inspector. Moreover, the inspector can decide on additional charges only for a period up to six months prior to when the dispute was raised. "Provisions of the Indian Electricity Act manifest that the original correct meter once installed acquires a sacrosanct status. After installation, both parties cannot remove or replace the meter," said the judge. The court said that if the power company or consumer suspects that a meter is defective, then the matter should be brought before the electricity inspector. The company will n...