Ramchand Dulichand v. Saraswatipore Tea Co. , Ltd.
1936-02-18
body1936
DigiLaw.ai
JUDGMENT Panckridge, J. - This is a claim, on behalf of the Faridpore Loan Office, Limited, respecting an attachment effected by the Plaintiffs in execution of a decree for Rs. 3,799. The attachment was in this form. It was a prohibitory order restraining the Defendant Company from alienating, and transferring, or in any way dealing with the tea export quota, for the year 1935, allotted by the Indian Tea Licensing Committee. The petition States that the order was served not only on the Defendant Company but on the Joint Controllers of the Indian Tea Licensing Committee, prohibiting them from recognising any transfer or alienation of the export quota. The claimants maintain that the export quota is not available to satisfy the decree obtained by the Plaintiffs, because it is covered by a mortgage of the 21st June, 1930, made between the Loan Office as mortgagees and the Tea Company as mortgagors. 2. The claimants further state that even if the registered mortgage, to which I have referred, does not cover the quota, various transactions which have taken place since the date of the mortgage have had the effect of bringing the tea quota within the scope of the claimants' security, if the mortgage deed had not already effectually done so. 3. I have on a former occasion dealt at some length with the provisions and general scheme of the Indian Tea Control Act, 1933, and my judgment is reported in 39 C. W. Notes at page 1261 [Ghose & Sons v. Chandrapore Tea Company, Limited 39 C.W.N. 1261 (1934)]. I do not think any useful purpose would be served by my again analysing the provisions of the Act. At the time I delivered my judgment the Act was. comparatively speaking, a novelty, but in the interval its provisions must have become fairly familiar to the tea trade and the public in general. In that case I held that a mortgage of all the right, title and interest of the mortgagor in the mortgaged properties was ineffectual to transfer the right to the tea expert quota, and that the mortgagees were not in a position to object to the transfer of the quota to the Plaintiffs in that suit. The document, which I there had to construe, was a Bengali instrument of mortgage.
The document, which I there had to construe, was a Bengali instrument of mortgage. In this case the document, on which the claimants rely, is an English document of considerably greater elaboration and formality. The operative clause for the purpose of this application is cl. 2 (e). That clause runs as follows:- As a continuing security for the amount now lent as well as the money to be advanced as herein-before stated subject to a maximum limit or Rs. 3,00,000/- three lakhs only, the mortgagor does convey unto the mortgagee by way of simple mortgage all the immovable properties, lands, factories, and machineries attached to the earth together with all implements present and future, garden, estates together with present and future plantation and extended garden, if any, and nurseries all bungalows, all substantial or uusubstantial buildings, present and future all outhouses, stables, cooly gauge, roads and bridges, appertaining to the garden as described and specified in schedule below together with all the interests which the mortgagor now is or in future will be capable of passing in the mortgaged properties and in the legal incidents thereof". 4. The words with which I am concerned are the words: Together with all the interests which the mortgagor now is or in future will be capable of passing in the mortgaged properties and in the legal incidents thereof. 5. It has been pointed out that the document is of a date considerably anterior to the passing of the Indian Tea Control Act, and that presumably the parties to it could not have contemplated any such scheme of quotas and licenses as was subsequently established by the Act. That may be so, but on the other hand the language shows that the parties did contemplate that interests in the land and legal incidents might come into being at a date subsequent to the mortgage, and it was undoubtedly the intention of the parties that such interests and the legal incidents appertaining to such interests should be available as security to the mortgagees equally with the interests existing at the date of the mortgage. 6.
6. What I have to decide is whether the right to obtain a tea quota is, on a fair construction, covered by the words " the legal incidents thereof." It has been pointed out to me that the word " thereof " must refer to the words " mortgaged properties." My former judgment, for what it is worth, is an authority for the proposition that the right to obtain a tea quota is not an interest in the mortgaged properties in the case of a mortgage of a tea estate. But to my mind the addition of the words " legal incidents thereof " make all the difference, and I cannot think of words which would more aptly indicate the intention of the mortgagors to include in the security every privilege and advantage which the ownership of mortgaged properties might legally entail. I do not think there is any force in the argument that the quota, when obtained, is transferable. The ownership of the tea garden is a condition precedent to the right to obtain the tea quota, and the fact that when the quota is obtained the grantee however can assign the right to apply for export licenses to make his quota effective, appears to me to have little bearing on the matter. I am of opinion that, since the passing of the Act, the right to obtain a quota is a legal incident of the ownership of a tea estate. It follows, therefore, that the language of the deed has effectually brought the right to the tea export quota within the scope of the mortgage. In these circumstances, it is not necessary for me to consider what was the effect, if any, of subsequent transactions between the claimants and the Defendant Company. It is not suggested that anything which happened since the date of the mortgage has had the effect of diminishing the security thereby created. It follows therefore that the claimants must succeed, and the attachment will be removed.