Litigant tells Karnataka High Court that trial court cited "non-existent" judgments of SC

A seemingly routine hearing in a civil revision petition before the Karnataka High Court Tuesday took a curious turn when the Senior Advocate appearing for the petitioner in the matter told the Court that the trial court in its order has cited three judgements none of which actually exist..Senior Counsel Prabhuling Navadgi told single-judge Justice R Devdas that the trial court had denied relief to his client in November 2024.At the time, the trial court judge had cited three judgements—two from the Supreme Court and one from the Delhi High Court. These judgements were the sole reasoning on which the trial court’s order was based.However, these judgements appeared to have been “fraudulently manufactured” as there exist no records for the same either on the relevant courts’ websites or on any other official records, Navadgi told the court.“It happens sometimes when one uses artificial intelligence programs and chatbots such as ChatGPT, AI might generate fictional results. It sometimes makes things up. I don’t know what happened here but these judgements do not exist,” Navadgi told the High Court..The Senior Advocate further said that if one searches for the case status on the websites of the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court then, the case titles and the citations mentioned by the trial court do not match.Navadgi was appearing on behalf of one Samman Capital, a non-banking financial firm..The firm said in its petition that in 2018, it had advanced loans to Mantri group, a real estate developer. At the time, it had also executed a bond trustee agreement with the Mantri group, the petitioner firm told the Court. After the respondent-developer defaulted on the loans and the agreement, Samman Capital issued an invocation and sale notice. However, the Mantri group moved the trial court against the same.Samman Capital opposed the proceedings and filed an application challenging the jurisdiction of trial court on the ground that the dispute between the parties fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015.However, Samman Capital’s application was dismissed on November 25, 2024, by the court of the IX Additional city civil and sessions judge, Bengaluru..In her November 25 order, the trial court judge said she had relied upon three judgements to hold that her court has the jurisdiction to “try the suit” filed by Mantri developers.The judgements cited in such order were in the case of “M/s Jalan trading co pvt ltd vs Millenium telecom ltd in civil appeal number 5860/2010” and “Kvalrner Cimentation India vs Achil builders in civil appeal number 6074/2018,” of the Supreme Court and the case of “SK Gopal vs UNI Deritend LTD CS 1114/2016” of the Delhi High Court..The petitioner, in its plea filed through advocate Chintan Chinappa, however, told the Karnataka High Court that there were no official records for all of these three judgements.The petitioner further said that none of these judgements had been cited by either of the parties during the hearing before the trial court..The counsel for the respondent-developer said he was not aware of the alleged error and sought time to confirm the same.Justice Devdas accordingly adjourned the hearing to February 5 this year.