Advocates should not misuse court for personal gains: HC

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has warned advocates against misusing the court for their personal gains. The observation came in a judgment on a contempt petition after a senior counsel said that the petition was filed due to the greed of the complainant and at the insistence of his counsel.

“We expect that the learned Members of the Bar, who are officers of the Court, at any cost, should not misuse and ditch the court proceedings for their personal gain,” the division bench of Justice B Veerappa and Justice Venkatesh Naik T said while dismissing a contempt petition filed by one AV Chandrappa.

Since Chandrappa had died in the meantime since the filing of the petition in 2019, his wife and children were included as parties in the case. Chandrappa and others had sought regularization of his service as a cook at the Government Medical College, Mysuru. The Industrial Tribunal had ordered in his favour in 2003. The matter was appealed before a single-judge bench of the HC which set aside the Tribunal order in 2009.

Chandrappa and others appealed before a Division Bench of the HC which ruled in their favour in 2013. The college approached the Supreme Court which dismissed their petition in 2015. Chandrappa filed the contempt petition against the principal of the college for not following the court orders in 2019. The bench of the HC recently dismissed this petition after it found that he had not approached the court with clean hands. The college had regularized his job in 2018 itself.

“When the complainant has been regularized on 16th January, 2018, in all fairness, the complainant should not have filed Contempt Petition on 9th September 2019 before this Court. When he has filed an Execution Petition, there cannot be any parallel proceedings simultaneously for the same relief, before the trial Court as well as before this Court,” the HC said.

The HC said it was refraining from imposing heavy costs on Chandrappa. “Though, we are inclined to impose heavy cost on the accused, but for the conduct of the complainant in misusing the contempt proceedings under provisions of Section 11 and 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, we are refraining ourselves to impose any cost.

Thereby, the complainant has not come to the Court with clean hands and he has suppressed the material facts and the act of the complainant is nothing but a daring ride on the court,” it said. The senior counsel appearing for Chandrappa’s family said that due to greed and insistence of his advocate he had filed the petition. The Court said it was not imposing a cost due to his submission.

“Since the learned counsel for the complainant brought to our notice that the original complainant, who with greed, at the instance of the learned counsel has filed this Contempt petition, is no more and the legal representatives of the original complainant are brought on record, we resist ourselves to do so, with a warning that the complainants and their Advocates should not misuse the contempt provisions.”