Come Prepared or get appeal dismissed - Delhi HC tells Senior Advocate

By Vijay Kumar

RECENTLY the Delhi High Court dismissed a batch of appeals as the Senior Counsel was not prepared to argue.

The High Court observed,

Learned senior counsel ought not to have appeared today if he had no time to study the brief. Declining to adjourn the matter we have requested learned counsel to proceed with the arguments. Learned senior counsel states that since it is his duty to assist the Court, he cannot argue the matters without reading the brief.

If this be so, learned senior counsel ought not to have appeared.

The junior members of the bar always have a grievance of senior counsel being accommodated and they being called upon to argue their matters. In our opinion a senior counsel ought not to appear in a matter in which he has been briefed but the learned senior counsel has no time to study the brief.

We have once again called upon learned senior counsel to advance arguments but learned senior counsel declines.

The appeals are accordingly dismissed for non prosecution.

This was on September 07 2015. But on 18.09.2015, the High Court restored the appeals observing,

Notwithstanding the reasons recorded in the order dated September 07, 2015 dismissing the appeals for non-prosecution, we are inclined to accept the apology tendered in the applications and restore the appeals for hearing because the question of law is important and is a subject matter of other appeals which are admitted .