Declaration of intent not final verdict: apex court

New Delhi: A judge’s declaration of his intention of what his ‘judgment’ will be, or of what final result it is going to embody, is not a judgment until he crystallises his intentions into a formal shape and pronounces it in open court as the final expression of his mind, the Supreme Court has held.
A Bench consisting of Justices Arijit Pasayat and P. Sathasivam said: “The Civil Procedure Code does not envisage the writing of a judgment after deciding the case by an oral judgment and it must not be resorted to. It would be against public policy to ascertain by evidence alone what the ‘judgment’ of the court was, where the final result was announced orally but the ‘judgment’ as defined in the CPC was finalised later on.”
Quoting Section 2 (9) of the CPC, the Bench said: “A judgment shall contain a concise statement of the case, the points for determination, the decision thereon and the reasons for such decision. It should be a self-contained document from which it should appear what the facts of the case were and what was the controversy which was tried to be settled by the court and in what manner. The process of reasoning by which the court came to the ultimate conclusion and decreed the suit should be reflected clearly in the judgment.”
In the instant case, Prema filed a suit for specific performance against the respondent K.V. Rami Reddi in the court of Seventh Assistant Judge, City Civil Court, Chennai. It was stated that on March 24, 1999, the judge made an endorsement in the plaint docket that the plaintiff was not entitled to the relief of specific performance but was entitled to a refund of Rs. 2 lakh.
Revision petition
Against this, Ms. Prema filed a revision petition in the Madras High Court contending that only the operative portion was dictated in the court on March 25, 1999 and, therefore, the decision rendered the previous day was a nullity. The High Court set aside the order and remitted the matter back to the trial court for fresh disposal. Aggrieved, Mr. Reddi filed the present appeal.
Dismissing it, the Bench said: “The date of the judgment is never altered by the date on which the signature has been put subsequently. The mere fact that a major portion of the judgment has already been dictated will not by itself lead to the conclusion that the judgment had been delivered.”
Undisputedly, the trial judge had not completed the judgment before he delivered his decision. “That being so, the impugned judgment does not suffer from any infirmity to warrant interference,” the Bench said and directed the trial court to hear arguments afresh and deliver its judgment within three months.
(The Hindu, Legal Correspondent. Online edition of India's National NewspaperThursday, Feb 28, 2008)