Today, a division bench of the Supreme Court of
India (“Supreme Court”) has made an important observation (Rashmi Metalinks Ltd. & Ors v.Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority & Ors.) regarding the plethora of cases cited by the counsels. The Court observed that:
“This
Court, and even more so the High Court as well as the subordinate courts have
to face lengthy arguments in each case because of the practice of citing
innumerable decisions on a particular point of law. The correct approach is to
predicate arguments on the decision which holds the field......”
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The problem, according to the bench of Justice
T.S. Thakur and Justice Vikramajit Sen, is not with the cases which deal with
different questions of law. But, the main problem arises when each of the cited
cases deals with the same question of law in the same manner. Senior Advocates
K.V. Vishwanathan and A.M. Singhvi had appeared for the appellants and the
respondents respectively. Both of them relied heavily on numbers on judgments of
the Supreme Court which, in the opinion of the Court, were similar in nature. According to the court:
