Calcutta High Court deprecates civil courts' trend of passing "short-cut" status quo orders without ascertaining property status

The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday criticised the trend of civil courts to take a “short-cut method” of granting status quo orders in property disputes without first determining the status of the property in dispute or which party is in possession. [M/s Messerger Courier & Cargo Pvt Ltd v. UMA Forzing Works (P) Ltd & ors].Justice Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee observed that this practice has already been deprecated in various Supreme Court and High Court judgments..In a property dispute, if a court is thinking of ordering status quo (orders to preserve the existing status of a property), it must record a finding as to who is in possession of the property in the first place, Justice Mukherjee explained.Vague orders of status quo, which do not indicate any such details cannot be encouraged at any cost as such orders “unnecessarily generate multiplicity of disputes”, the High Court commented.Such orders also do not render any effective service to litigants, the judge added. Leaving these details in doubt and ambiguity will result in dangerous consequences, the Court warned.“Such orders instead of advancing the cause of justice are creating problematic situations, where the litigants are filing one petition after another without knowing where to seek justice,” the judgment stated..Prior to ordering status quo, the court must also be satisfied that it is a fit case to issue such an order, Justice Mukherjee added. This obligation cannot be avoided simple by leaving it to the affected party to prove in a trial that the status quo order needs to be vacated..The Court made the observation while dealing with a plea challenging a status quo order passed by the Additional District Judge, Howrah.The petition was allowed after the Court found that the status quo order in question had been passed without first ascertaining which party was in possession over a disputed property. It was also noted that the trial court had cited an irrelevant ground to pass the status quo order.“The reason of passing such order of status quo is, ‘unless the triable issues are determined by extensive trial, an order of status quo is relevant at this stage.’ In fact pendency of triable issue which needs to be adjudicated by extensive trial is practically no ground for passing an order of status quo,” the High Court said..The High Court proceeded to direct the trial court to hear both parties afresh in the matter and set aside the status quo order under challenge..Advocates Sabyasachi Chaudhury, Rajarshi Dutta, Sayantan Bose and Sattik Raut appeared for the petitioner. Advocates Prabal Mukherjee, Malay Dhar and Biswajit Sarkar represented the respondents. .[Read Judgment]