Bloopers in court: The law of getting it ‘wrong’

Everyone knows legal jargon is often difficult to decipher, but the judgment of the Himachal Pradesh high court in a landlord-tenant dispute in 1999 twisted things beyond comprehension.

It said, hold your breath, “The learned counsel...cannot derive the fullest succour from the aforesaid acquiescence... given its sinew suffering partial dissipation from an imminent display occurring in the impugned pronouncement hereat wherewithin unravelments are held qua the rendition recorded by the learned Rent Controller...(sic)”

Legal luminaries, justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta, in the Supreme Court, after trying to decipher what was being said, came up with a classic response: “We will have to set it (judgment) aside because one cannot understand this.”

Legal gaffes, goof-ups and meandering sentences – that’s life in the courts. Even Chandigarh courts are not immune to such bloopers. A close reading of some of the recent court orders highlights the error in judgments.

Business ‘magnets’ and white-collar crimes

A special CBI court in Sector 43, Chandigarh, while convicting a sub-inspector in a graft case called it a white-collar crime, saying it was of “the kind committed by highly qualified and ranked persons through business magnets.”

Maybe magnates have a lesser chance of attracting trouble.

Booked for sexual harassment acquitted for robbery

In a bizarre turn of events a minor from Dhanas in Chandigarh booked for sexual harassment and outraging the modesty of a minor girl (Sections 354-A, 509 of the Indian Penal Code or IPC and Section 12 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offence Act or POCSO) was acquitted by the judge under Section 392 (robbery) of the IPC. As for the judgment, we’ll leave it to you to figure out what the following means: “..It becomes highly doubtful to believe that the complainant was ever put under fear of injury by the juvenile for committing robbery.”

Cut-paste jobs

Judgments often seem to be cut-paste jobs, borrowing heavily from previous orders, especially in cases related to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. Eight judgments of an additional district and sessions judge at the Chandigarh District Courts in NDPS cases were identical in tone and tenor — barring the names of the accused. So much so, employment details of two persons booked under the NDPS Act in two separate cases on January 30 and March 1, 2018, were the same even though the defence counsel said it wasn’t so.

Plaintiff turns defendant

In a case argued at the Patiala trial court by city lawyer Rohit Khullar, a civil petition that was disposed of referred frequently to the plaintiff as defendant and vice versa.

The judgment given on April 13, 2018, was also contradictory as it first granted the custody of the child to the petitioner, by saying “The application in hand is allowed (accepted) and the defendants are restrained from interfering into the peaceful life and liberty of the plaintiffs.” In the next line the application was rejected, with the judge saying “it is dismissed.”

Spell check, please

In the last 10 pages of the concluding paragraph of the 168-page judgment by the additional district and sessions judge, Chandigarh, on the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, the name of a Sikh militant organisation, Babbar Khalsa, was misspelt twice: Once as Babar and then as Babarr.

The judgment, in great detail also elaborated on how the convict in the case escaped, saying: “Not only this during the trial the convict breakdown the jail and ran away.”

The head of the Chandigarh Judicial Academy, Balram Gupta, feels a judgment isn’t just limited to the two parties involved. “The language needs to be simple and easily understandable. Legal terminology should be used in short sentences as it is a public document,” he said.

Nishta Jaiswal, professor, department of law, Panjab University, says while clarity of language is of utmost importance, there should be more workshops for subordinate court judges on the literature of judgments.