Can’t understand your verdict: SC sends case back to HC
“(The)...tenant in the demised premises stands aggrieved by the pronouncement made by the learned Executing Court upon his objections constituted therebefore...wherewithin the apposite unfoldments qua his resistance to the execution of the decree stood discountenanced by the learned Executing Court”.
Does not make any sense? You are not alone. Even the Supreme Court thinks so. Even the contesting lawyers agreed that this is English as ”tough” as it can get.
A two-judge bench of the top court has set aside this convoluted judgment authored by a Himachal Pradesh high court judge in a landlord vs tenant case.
“We will have to set it aside because one cannot understand this,” a bench of justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta said on Friday. Justice Lokur, however, did not record it in the written order sending the judgment back to the HC judge for re-drafting.
The landlord had moved the top court after the HC barred him from evicting his tenant.
The HC verdict is a case study of exactly how English should not be written.
Sample this:
“However, the learned counsel...cannot derive the fullest succour from the aforesaid acquiesence... given its sinew suffering partial dissipation from an imminent display occurring in the impunged pronouncement hereat wherewithin unravelments are held qua the rendition recorded by the learned Rent Controller...”
Aishwarya Bhati, who represented the tenant, told the court in a lighter vein that she would have to hire an English professor to make out what the judge meant. Advocate EC Agrawala, representing the landlord, too complained of the “convoluted” judgment.
Agrawala told the court that another SC bench had set aside the same HC judge’s order in a different case for confusing language.
“We normally prepare an appeal in two days’ time. However, in this case I took more than a week because the facts of the case were unclear. I had to call for the trial court order to understand the entire matter,” he later told HT.
The dispute dates back to November 1999 when the landlord filed an eviction petition against his tenant for alleged non-payment of rent. The landlord has got part possession of the property and is fighting to get the full possession after the HC stayed the eviction.