The court should not go beyond what is pleaded in pleadings for adjudication

When the facts necessary to make out a particular claim, or to seek a particular relief, are not found in the plaint, the court cannot focus the attention of the parties, or its own attention on that claim or relief, by framing an appropriate issue. 

Supreme Court in the case namely Bachhaj Nahar vs. Nilima Mandal & Anr., (Civil Appeal Nos. 5798-5799 of 2008) decided on 23.09.2008 and reported as (2008) 17 SCC 491 dealt with the issue as to whether court can go beyond what is pleaded in pleadings for adjudication?

The Court while deciding the present appeal also made a distinction on what is to be determined while adjudicating upon easement rights.

While disposing of the present appeal, the Supreme Court observed that the High Court in its obvious zeal to cut delay and hardship that may ensue by relegating the plaintiffs to one more round of litigation rendered a judgment which violated several fundamental rules of civil procedure. The rules held to be breached were:

1. No amount of evidence can be looked into, upon a plea which was never put forward in the pleadings. A question which did arise from the pleadings and which was not the subject matter of an issue, cannot be decided by the court.
2. A Court cannot make out a case not pleaded. The court should confine its decision to the question raised in pleadings. Nor can it grant a relief which is not claimed and which does not flow from the facts and the cause of action alleged in the plaint.
3. A factual issue cannot be raised or considered for the first time in a second appeal.

Civil Procedure Code, as observed, is an elaborate codification of the principles of natural justice to be applied to civil litigation. The provisions are so elaborate that many a time, fulfillment of the procedural requirements of the Code may itself contribute to delay. But any anxiety to cut the delay or further litigation should not be a ground to float the settled fundamental rules of civil procedure. The object and purpose of pleadings and issues is to ensure that the litigants come to trial with all issues clearly defined and to prevent cases being expanded or grounds being shifted during trial. Its object is also to ensure that each side is fully alive to the questions that are likely to be raised or considered so that they may have an opportunity of placing the relevant evidence appropriate to the issues before the court for its consideration. The pleadings are meant to give to each side intimation of the case of the other so that it may be met, to enable courts to determine what is really at issue between the parties, and to prevent any deviation from the course which litigation on particular causes must take.

The object of issues is to identify from the pleadings the questions or points required to be decided by the courts so as to enable parties to let in evidence thereon. When the facts necessary to make out a particular claim, or to seek a particular relief, are not found in the plaint, the court cannot focus the attention of the parties, or its own attention on that claim or relief, by framing an appropriate issue. As a result the defendant does not get an opportunity to place the facts and contentions necessary to repudiate or challenge such a claim or relief. Therefore, the court cannot, on finding that the plaintiff has not made out the case put forth by him, grant some other relief.

The question before a court is not whether there is some material on the basis of which some relief can be granted. The question is whether any relief can be granted, when the defendant had no opportunity to show that the relief proposed by the court could not be granted. When there is no prayer for a particular relief and no pleadings to support such a relief, and when defendant has no opportunity to resist or oppose such a relief, if the court considers and grants such a relief, it will lead to miscarriage of justice. Thus it is said that no amount of evidence, on a plea that is not put forward in the pleadings, can be looked into to grant any relief.

In the instant matter High Court was held to have ignored the aforesaid principles relating to the object and necessity of pleadings. Even though right of easement was not pleaded or claimed by the plaintiffs, and even though parties were at issue only in regard to title and possession of the property in question, it made out for the first time in second appeal, a case of easement and granted relief based on an easementary right.

It was held that a case not specifically pleaded can be considered by the court only where the pleadings in substance, though not in specific terms, contains the necessary averments to make out a particular case and the issues framed also generally cover the question involved and the parties proceed on the basis that such case was at issue and had led evidence thereon. As the very requirements indicate, this should be only in exceptional cases where the court is fully satisfied that the pleadings and issues generally cover the case subsequently put forward and that the parties being conscious of the issue had led evidence on such issue. But where the court is not satisfied that such case was at issue, the question of resorting to the exception to the general rule does not arise.

Without pleadings and issues, evidence cannot be considered to make out a new case which is not pleaded. The court can consider such a case not specifically pleaded, only when one of the parties raises the same at the stage of arguments by contending that the pleadings and issues are sufficient to make out a particular case and that the parties proceeded on that basis and had led evidence on that case. Where neither party puts forth such a contention, the court cannot obviously make out such a case not pleaded, suo moto.

The facts relevant to the present case or claim of the plaintiffs were that they were the owners of the suit property and that the first defendant had encroached upon it. The plaintiffs had not pleaded, even as an alternative case, that they were entitled to an easementary right of passage over the schedule property.

It was observed that the facts to be pleaded and proved for establishing title were different from the facts to be pleaded and proved for making out an easementary right. A suit for declaration of title and possession relates to the existence and establishment of natural rights which inhere in a person by virtue of his ownership of a property. On the other hand, a suit for enforcement of an easementary right, relates to a right possessed by a dominant owner/occupier over a property not his own, having the effect of restricting the natural rights of the owner/occupier of such property.

Easements may relate to a right of way, a right to light and air, right to draw water, right to support, right to have overhanging eaves, right of drainage, right to a water course etc. Easements can be acquired by different ways and are of different kinds, that is, easement by grant, easement of necessity, easement by prescription, etc. A dominant owner seeking any declaratory or injunctive relief relating to an easementary right shall have to plead and prove the nature of easement, manner of acquisition of the easementary right, and the manner of disturbance or obstruction to the easementary right. The pleadings necessary to establish an easement by prescription, are different from the pleadings and proof necessary for easement of necessity or easement by grant. With regard to an easement by prescription, the plaintiff is required to plead and prove that he was in peaceful, open and uninterrupted enjoyment of the right for a period of twenty years (ending within two years next before the institution of the suit). He should also plead and prove that the right claimed was enjoyed independent of any agreement with the owner of the property over which the right is claimed, as any user with the express permission of the owner will be a licence and not an easement. For claiming an easement of necessity, the plaintiff has to plead that his dominant tenement and defendant’s servient tenement originally constituted a single tenement and the ownership thereof vested in the same person and that there has been a severance of such ownership and that without the easementary right claimed, the dominant tenement cannot be used. The pleadings necessary for establishing a right of passage is different from a right of drainage or right to support of a roof or right to water course.

A court cannot assume or infer a case of easementary right, by referring to a stray sentence here and a stray sentence there in the pleading or evidence. A right of easement can be declared only when the servient owner is a party to the suit.

It can thus be concluded that courts cannot exercise its judicial position to grant relief which is not even sought by parties in the pleadings.