Supreme Court sets aside Madras High Court decision for literal interpretation of word 'resides'

The Supreme Court on Monday quashed a judgment of the Madras High Court for its illogical conclusion that the verb ‘reside’ should be given a literal meaning, especially with regard to its usage in deeds and statutes [V Prakash v M/s PS Govindaswamy Naidu & Sons]..A Bench of Justices Vineet Saran and Dinesh Maheshwari was unimpressed with the findings of the Madras High Court in a judgment by which it refused to order a Trust to appoint the appellant as the founding trustee on that ground that he was not “residing" in Madras Presidency as required by the scheme of administration of the trust. Drawing an example from the deed itself, the Bench said that if the rule of literal construction was applied literally, the term about residing within “Madras Presidency” would itself be treated as redundant for the simple reason that as of today, geographically or demographically, there did not exist any location which could be termed as “Madras Presidency”..Therefore, the Court said that the words and expressions in the deeds or statutes have to be interpreted in their contextual and contemporary meaning without violating its true intention and purpose."In this process of construction, the words and expressions are not viewed as fossil remains; rather they retain the organic character and do take their meaning from all the surroundings. For that matter, a particular word like “resides” could carry multiple different connotations with reference to the time or period of its interpretation; and connotations may be different than those understood about 100 years back," the judgment stated. .Another observation of the High Court which the apex court said "does not stand to logic", is a hypothesis that if the construction of sentence or words was to be made with reference to the present-day scenario, sometime later, some judge might think that restricting the trusteeship to male members was against gender justice and that it should be read to include female too. "The hypothesis as suggested by the High Court is of the process of altering the term of a document. The question at hand is of assigning a logical, contextual and contemporary meaning to a particular expression. It is one thing to alter the term of a document and cannot be equated with the process of assigning a purposeful meaning to a particular expression. In the true rules of construction, the words are always assigned the meaning which stand in tandem with their context, while assuring that the assigned meaning serves the purpose," the judgment stated .The top court found that the appellant’s claim was wrongly rejected by the High Court which failed to examine the issue within the right context and purpose. “A comprehensive look at the logic and reasoning of the High Court in the impugned judgment impels us to observe that the High Court seems to have approached the case from an altogether wrong angle and has proceeded on irrelevant considerations while ignoring the relevant factors and material considerations,” the Court said. .The Supreme Court was hearing an appeal against an order of the Madras High Court that set aside a judgment of the Principal District Judge, Coimbatore.The current appellant had sought a declaration that he was entitled to be appointed the founder trustee of the respondent-trust as per its scheme of administration as he was the surviving male descendant of the branch represented by his late father.This claim was contested by the trust on the ground he was a Green Card holder of the United States of America and, therefore, did not fulfill the requirement that mandated him to be “residing within the area of Madras Presidency’.The trial court held that the appellant was indeed a resident of the area in question and was therefore, qualified to hold the position of founder trustee of the trust.However, the High Court said that the appellant had stayed in India for only short periods of time in the past, and his assertion of intent to permanently reside in India was contradicted by the evidence. .The Bench noted that despite the "overwhelming" evidence furnished by the appellant such as his Aadhar Card, property and residential proof in India, bank accounts details etc., the High Court considered only the number of days he lived in India and also the USA.“Viewed from any angle, we are satisfied that the judgment of the High Court remains unsustainable. In our view, the Trial Court had rightly analysed the evidence on record and arrived at a just conclusion in upholding the claim of the appellant to the office of founder trustee in the respondent-Trust", the judgment said.With this, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal..Senior Advocate V Mohana and advocates B Raghunath and Sriram Parakkat appeared for the petitioner. Senior Advocates V Giri, MN Rao and Gopal Sankaranarayanan appeared for the respondents. .[Read Judgment]