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The Delhi High Court has held that Commercial Courts are not required to entertain or allow applications for late filing of documents, unless a party is able to establish a good cause for non-disclosure at the time of the pleadings. The plaintiff pleaded that the document sought to be filed was not filed earlier “owing to the error of the earlier Advocate for the plaintiff” and that the non-filing of the document was not deliberate but due to an inadvertent, bona fide mistake. The Court was then informed by the counsel for the defendant that the plaintiff till then had neither filed the list of witnesses nor affidavits by way of examination-in-chief of his witnesses in spite of expiry of the time granted for the same. The order was passed by a Single Judge Bench of Justice Rajiv Sahai End law in an application by the plaintiff in a commercial suit, seeking to file an additional document post framing of issues. The suit was instituted by the plaintiff for the recovery of Rs.1,25,00,000 with interest from the defendant pursuant to an unsuccessful agreement of sale of immovable property belonging to the defendant.
The additional document was a letter dated September 2, 2013, written by the defendant to the plaintiff and one Ashwini Kumar Somany, which was meant to give proof of the money transaction between the plaintiff and the defendant.
While the issues were framed in the suit on November 13, 2018, the application came up for hearing on April 11, 2019.
The Court further held that for a plaintiff to be allowed to belatedly file a document under Order XI, Rule 1(5) of the CPC, he must not only plead but also establish reasonable cause for non-disclosure along with the plaint. holding that Commercial Courts are not required to entertain or allow applications for late filing of documents without any good cause being established for non-disclosure, the Court stated that the plaintiff utterly failed in this regard. The application for belated filing was therefore dismissed by the Court.
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