Can Filing a Case Late Result in No Relief?

Recently, in a case involving the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (“MCGM”) and a construction company, the Supreme Court ruled that courts cannot deny the relief a petitioner has asked for simply because of a delay in filing a petition.  

In this case, the petitioners had surrendered their private property for public good. According to the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966 (“MRTP”), they were entitled to a certain amount of compensation. However, the MCGM refused to pay this amount. It relied on changes in the laws about the quantum of compensation. When the petitioners took this dispute to the Bombay High Court, the court dismissed their petition relying on the ‘doctrine of delay and laches’. It is this order of the Bombay High Court that the Supreme Court overturned. 

In this Weekly, we discuss what is the doctrine of delay and laches and how it was applied in this case.

What is the doctrine of delay and laches?

The doctrine of delay and laches is a principle about the consequence of unnecessary delay in filing a petition. It permits courts to dismiss the petition and order the petitioner to compensate the defendant in such cases. Laches mean “ an opportunity that is lost”. This doctrine highlights that if you do not exercise your right to approach the court for any legal redressal in time without good reason, you lose that right. You also have to compensate the defendant for filing a delayed petition against them. 

While invoking this doctrine, the defendant has to show that the petitioner’s delay was unreasonable. They also have to show that the petitioner knew about their claim in advance but was negligent in bringing it before a court of law. The petitioner has to disprove these allegations. 

What have the courts said about this doctrine?

Several Supreme Court judgements have dealt with this doctrine while deciding whether or not to dismiss a case. 

In Dehri Rohtas Light Rly. Co. Ltd. vs. District Board, Bhojpur, (1992) the Supreme Court said that a delay can be condoned or forgiven, if the petitioner files the petition before a new legal right within the scope of the case is created. The actual amount of  time that has lapse before  filing is not the test for assessing the delay. For instance, X owed Y Rs 10,000 for a particular dispute but by the time Y took this dispute to the court, the governing law had changed to the extent that X now owed Y an interest over and above the original amount. However, since Y had delayed in filing the case, the court could possibly dismiss the case. 

In the 2020 case of Vidya Devi vs. State of Himachal Pradesh, the Supreme Court held that when the subject matter of a case is undergoing legal process, this doctrine won’t apply. For example, in the current case, the dispute over the amount of contention was being decided by the Supreme Court parallelly in another case. It will also not apply in cases where the cause of contention is ongoing like a case involving violation of safety at workplace. Courts can decide on whether to condone a delay or not based on the facts and circumstances of the case at hand. 

In Tukaram Kana Joshi vs. Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (2013), the Supreme Court highlighted that applying the doctrine of delay and laches was a matter of the Court’s discretion. Delay cannot be an “absolute impediment” to a case. The court’s decision will depend on mitigating factors like the cause of delay, knowledge of the petitioner etc, especially if the case involves any violation of fundamental rights.  

In Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co. Ltd.(2023), the Supreme Court further clarified that delay in filing a petition due to an ongoing litigation is not the same as abandonment of a cause or claim.

What did the Court rule in this case?

In this case, the issue lay in the percentage of compensation that the petitioners were entitled to. The MCGM had relied on a new regulation passed by the Maharashtra  government about the revision in the compensation amount. However, since the petitioners had transferred their area before the regulation was passed, they claimed that the regulation won’t apply retroactively. While hearing this case, the Bombay High Court had agreed that retroactive application of a regulation cannot deny the petitioners of their claim but had dismissed their petition on grounds of delay. 

The Supreme Court overturned that decision and condoned the delay on the ground that the subject matter of this case ran parallel to an ongoing litigation in the Boyce case and cannot be the ground to deny them their lawful relief. 

Finally, the Supreme Court, while ordering the MCGM to pay the petitioner the claimed amount of compensation, held that in cases where a citizen is owed compensation for surrendering land, the government must pay it even without any formal request for such compensation. This is in keeping with Article 300-A of the Indian Constitution which guarantees that no person shall be deprived of their right to property except when authorised by law.