High court judges told to focus on case hearings

LHC judge says province’s top court judges must not act as ‘judicial technicians'

LAHORE:

Lahore High Court (LHC) Justice Shahid Waheed has said that province’s top court judges must not act as ‘judicial technicians’. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the LHC justice further said, “The courts ought not to present themselves as a workshop of technical justice.”

Justice Shahid Waheed further observed that the judges must make an endeavour to grant reasonable opportunity to both the parties to litigation to put up their best respective cases.

The LHC justice gave these remarks in his judgement he had handed in while deciding a matter wherein both the impugned judgments and decrees of the district courts were set aside and the case was remanded to the concerned trial court.

Justice Shahid Waheed added, “The case at my hands is a prime example of procedural gamesmanship and poses the question whether a person who knocks at the doors of the court, hoping to find justice, be punished for mistakes, when it is common that human beings have a propensity to commit errors?”

“Should every slight aberration of the law be visited with a denial of justice?” the LHC justice asked.

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An application was filed by the unsuccessful plaintiff under Section 115 CPC, alleging that his suit was illegally dismissed on technical ground by the courts below. The matter arises in this way that on August 7, 2006, the plaintiff instituted a suit for specific performance of an agreement regarding a house in Faisal Town, Lahore.

One respondent filed his contesting written statement while some of the other respondents neither submitted written statement nor took part in the proceedings, so they were proceeded against ex-parte.

Considering the pleadings, the trial court framed issues and fixed the date for recording the evidence. At this stage, two of the respondents filed an application to become a party in the suit stating that they had bought the property.

The application was granted vide order on May 7, 2019 and the petitioner plaintiff was directed to file an amended plaint by making two of the respondents as defendants.

Against this order, the petitioner filed an application for revision before the additional district & sessions judge Lahore.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2021.