BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 1 English 1 2017-18 Question Paper with Solutions

The words were uttered by Lawyer Scout, the country attorney, in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (Book IV, Chapter III), speaking to Lady Booby about Fanny Goodwill, the young woman Joseph Andrews intends to marry.

"Drab" means a dirty, slovenly woman — a slattern. It is a term of contempt for a woman's appearance and habits, and in older usage it could also carry the sense of a woman of loose character.

The woman is Sarah Stone, a widow who kept a small shop licensed to sell tobacco, snuff and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton, and the text is George Eliot's Adam Bede, Chapter XLIII, "The Verdict".

She is about to give evidence at the assize trial of Hetty Sorrel for child murder. The sentence is the narrator's, and it marks the moment at which Adam Bede, sitting in court, hears something that compels him to listen.

The speaker is Socrates, and the text is Plato's Apology. These are the closing words of the whole speech, addressed to the judges at Athens in 399 B.C. after sentence of death had been passed on him. The full sentence is: "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."

The question is taken from the Epilogue to M. C. Chagla's autobiography Roses in December, the chapter he added to a later edition specifically in order to deal with the Emergency. Chagla was Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court from 1948 to 1958, and afterwards Ambassador, Education Minister and Minister for External Affairs.

The Emergency was declared on 25 June 1975 and continued until March 1977.

(iii) "I didnt see or hear anything I knocked at the door and still it was all quiet inside" (Punctuate)

Answer: "I didn't see or hear anything. I knocked at the door, and still it was all quiet inside."

Why. "Didnt" needs an apostrophe: didn't, the contraction of did not. There are two independent statements, so a full stop is needed between them and a capital letter to begin the second. Within the second sentence, a comma before "and" separates the two clauses.

The two words. O. Henry's title names the two forces acting on Soapy, the homeless man of the story. The Cop stands for the law in its outward, coercive form: arrest, the magistrate, Blackwell's Island. The Anthem stands for conscience and memory: the church music that reaches him through an open window.

Why it fits.

1. The plot is Soapy's pursuit of the Cop. He wants three months' shelter and prefers prison to charity, because charity costs him his self-respect. Every attempt to be arrested fails.
2. The Anthem arrives unsought. Outside a quiet church at night he hears an anthem he knew as a boy; it restores mothers, roses, ambitions and clean thoughts, and in a moment he resolves to find work and reclaim his life.
3. The two meet at the close, in the wrong order. At the instant of that resolution the Cop arrests him for loitering and the magistrate gives him three months. He gets the Cop only once the Anthem has made him no longer want it.

The case. Balogh v St Albans Crown Court [1975] QB 73, Court of Appeal, Lord Denning MR, discussed in the prescribed Denning extract.

The facts. Stephen Balogh was a casual clerk employed by defence solicitors at the new air-conditioned Crown Court at St Albans, at £5 a day and knowing no law. A long trial about pornographic films and books dragged on, and he got exceedingly bored and made a plan to liven it up: he stole a cylinder of nitrous oxide, laughing gas, meaning to release it through the ventilation ducts into Court No. 1 so that the judge, counsel and jury would be affected.

It never happened. He left the cylinder in a briefcase in a room above the court; it was found, the police were told, and he admitted his intention. Melford Stevenson J dealt with him summarily and committed him for six months.

The Court of Appeal released him, on three grounds:

1. Not a contempt in the face of the court — the plan was never executed, nothing happened in the court's presence, and the judge learned of it as any other person would.

The principle. It is a contempt of court to intimidate a witness before he gives evidence or to punish him afterwards for having given it. The interest protected is not the individual case but the willingness of future witnesses to tell the truth.

The leading case: Attorney-General v Butterworth [1963] 1 QB 696. A member of a trade union branch was called before the Restrictive Practices Court and gave evidence against the union's position. Afterwards the branch removed him from his offices on the committee and as trustee, openly because of the evidence he had given.

The point of law. In the earlier authorities the witness had finished his evidence but the case was still going on, so it could be said that pending proceedings were being interfered with. Here the proceedings had ended, and the union argued that there was nothing left to prejudice.

The case: Attorney-General v Times Newspapers Ltd [1974] AC 273, discussed by Lord Denning in the prescribed extract.

The background. Thalidomide was a drug marketed in Britain by the Distillers Company and taken by pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It caused very severe deformities in the children born to them. The parents sued, and the litigation dragged on for more than ten years without coming to trial, while settlement negotiations proceeded privately.

The dispute. The Sunday Times, under Harold Evans, prepared an article examining how the drug came to be tested and marketed and criticising the settlement Distillers had offered. On 12 October 1972 the Attorney-General issued a writ for an injunction, on the ground that publication would be a contempt because it prejudged pending proceedings.

The decisions.

• The Divisional Court granted the injunction.

The rule. A witness lawfully called, sworn and asked a proper question must answer it. Refusal is a contempt of court, because a court decides on evidence and a witness who will not answer has stopped it deciding.

The leading case: Attorney-General v Mulholland and Foster [1963] 2 QB 477. Two journalists gave evidence before the Vassall Tribunal, an inquiry set up after an Admiralty clerk was convicted of spying. Asked to name the sources of statements they had published, they refused, were held in contempt, and were imprisoned.

Lord Denning's reasoning.

1. There is no privilege for journalists. The only profession given a privilege from disclosing information to a court is the legal profession, and even that privilege belongs to the client rather than the lawyer. A doctor, a priest, a banker, an accountant and a journalist have no legal right to refuse.

What it is. An order restraining a defendant from removing his assets out of the jurisdiction, or otherwise disposing of or dealing with them, pending trial. It is now generally called a freezing order, and it is one of the developments of which Lord Denning was the author.

The case that names it. Mareva Compania Naviera SA v International Bulkcarriers SA [1975] 2 Lloyd's Rep 509. Shipowners had chartered a vessel to charterers who defaulted on the hire; the charterers had money in a London bank account, and the owners feared it would be moved abroad before judgment. Denning granted an injunction restraining its removal. The same principle had been applied days earlier in Nippon Yusen Kaisha v Karageorgis [1975] 1 WLR 1093.

The problem it solved. The old rule was that a court would not restrain a defendant from dealing with his own property before judgment. The consequence was that a defendant who could see a judgment coming could simply move his money, and the plaintiff's victory would be worthless.

Its essential features.

Recently, Maharashtra became the 18th state to ban the use of plastic bags. The Delhi government directed schools to restrict students from using plastic covers for their books.

(The Hindustan Times, April 26, 2018) Questions: 1. What has been banned on April 12 and why?

2. What has the CPCB been charged with implementing?

3. What is 'part of the problem' with regard to plastic?

1. What has been banned on April 12 and why?

On 12 April the environment ministry banned the use of party poppers that use low-intensity chemical explosives and plastic streamers.

Two reasons are given. First, the ban is described as a precautionary measure, because these explosives can prove dangerous to people, especially children. Second, in the words of the official quoted, they are harmful for the environment and human health.

The ban is not absolute: only poppers using compressed air as the charge material and soft paper as streamers will be allowed.

What she does

1. She establishes the bond's validity, confirming that the Venetian law cannot impugn Shylock as he proceeds. 2. She appeals to mercy — "The quality of mercy is not strain'd" — as an argument and not an ornament. 3. She offers the money three times, and lets him refuse each offer on the record. 4. She refuses to bend the law. To Bassanio's "to do a great right, do a little wrong" she answers: "It must not be. There is no power in Venice can alter a decree established." 5. She awards the forfeit in full. "A pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine; the court awards it, and the law doth give it." 6. She lets the case run to the knife, and only then: "Tarry a little; there is something else." The bond gives flesh and not one drop of blood. 7. She produces the alien statute after judgment, and takes the ring afterwards as her fee.

Her merits as an advocate

She wins an unwinnable case by reading the document, which is the most lawyerly skill there is. She prepares — Bellario's notes, the alien statute known in advance. Her timing is faultless: by awarding the forfeit before producing the reservation she makes Shylock's refusals a matter of record. And she refuses the temptation to bend the law, which is the correct answer.

Conclusion

A brilliant advocate impersonating a judge. Her performance saves an innocent man by a method that would be set aside on appeal in any modern court, and Shakespeare, who worked among lawyers at the Inns of Court, is unlikely to have arranged that by accident.

3. As an inventor of evidence he does not have. He composes a whole speech for Mrs Bardell about single gentlemen, which nobody ever said; and he turns her placard, "Apartments furnished for a single gentleman", into a document of the case, though a juror discovers it bears no date.

4. As a master of sinister construction. The two notes are "covert, sly, underhanded communications", and therefore "far more conclusive than if couched in the most glowing language". "Chops! Gracious heavens! and tomato sauce!" And the warming-pan: who ever troubles himself about "a harmless, a useful, and I will add, gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic furniture", unless it is "a mere cover for hidden fire"?

5. As a bully. He tells the court that of Pickwick he will say little, "the subject presents but few attractions", and charges him with "revolting heartlessness, and of systematic villainy" — then, seeing Mr Pickwick start, tells him in open court that it would have been more decent had he stayed away, and that a counsel is not to be intimidated "be his name Pickwick, or Noakes, or Stoakes, or Stiles, or Brown, or Thompson."

6. As entirely unembarrassed by the truth. He knows there is no evidence of a promise; the speech is built to make the jury forget that they have been asked for one.

The occasion and the charges

Plato's Apology records the trial at Athens in 399 B.C. "Apology" means defence. The charges were that he did not acknowledge the gods the city acknowledged and introduced new divinities, and that he corrupted the youth. His accusers were Meletus, Anytus and Lycon.

The defence

1. He answers the old accusers first, not the indictment — the rumours circulating for years that he speculates about things in the heavens and below the earth and "makes the worse appear the better cause." He attacks the prejudice before he touches the pleading.

2. He explains why he is unpopular. The oracle at Delphi said no man was wiser than he; disbelieving it, he questioned politicians, poets and craftsmen and found each claiming knowledge he did not have. His wisdom is knowing that he does not know, and the questioning made enemies.

Verdict, penalty, and last words

Convicted by a narrow majority — he remarks that thirty votes the other way would have acquitted him — he proposed as his counter-penalty maintenance in the Prytaneum, the honour given to Olympic victors, and the vote for death was heavier than the vote to convict. To those who condemned him he prophesied that harsher critics would follow; to those who acquitted him he argued that death is one of two things and both are gains. His last words: "I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."

Assessment

As advocacy the defence fails, and deliberately. Every conventional device was available and he refused each one. As a defence of a life it succeeds completely, which is what he intended: he told the court he was defending himself for their sake and not his own, so that they might not sin against the god by rejecting his gift.

The occasion

The Great Trial, Government Circuit House, Shahi Bag, Ahmedabad, 18 March 1922, before Mr C. N. Broomfield, I.C.S. Gandhi and Shankarlal Banker were charged under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code over three articles in Young India. The Advocate-General, Sir Thomas Strangman, prosecuted, and Gandhi was unrepresented.

The defence

1. He pleaded guilty to all the charges, asked for no mercy, pleaded no extenuating circumstance, and did not put the prosecution to proof. The trial turned entirely on sentence.

2. He accepted responsibility for violence he had not intended — Chauri Chaura, Bombay, Madras — saying he had underestimated the forces of evil, knew he was playing with fire, and would do the same again. "I wanted to avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed."

The judgment

Broomfield: "you have made my task easy in one way by pleading guilty", but a just sentence was "perhaps as difficult a proposition as a Judge in this country could have to face." Gandhi was "in a different category from any person I have ever tried", and even opponents saw him as "a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly life" — but it was the judge's duty to try him as a subject of the State. Sentence: six years' simple imprisonment, measured against Tilak's, with the addition that if the Government could later reduce it, "no one will be better pleased than I." He served two years.

Critical account

In his favour: he was completely consistent, and he refused every device that would have compromised the position — no denial, no mitigation, no plea for mercy. He turned the dock into a place from which to try the law, and his statement outlived the judgment.

Who he is

Dr Austin Bond is the detective in Arnold Bennett's short story "Murder!" He is brought in to investigate the killing of John Franting after the ordinary methods have failed, and he is the man who breaks the case against Lomax Harder, the poet who committed it.

How Bennett presents him

1. As a specialist called in from outside, with a reputation already made. The point of bringing him in is that the routine inquiry has produced nothing, and everybody expects him to succeed where it did not.

2. As the exact opposite of the murderer. Harder's protection is that nobody can imagine him doing it: he is mild, slight and literary, and ordinary suspicion slides off him. Bond does not deal in imagining. He deals in what can be observed — which is precisely why he is a danger to a man whose alibi consists of other people's assumptions.

The case

Hetty Sorrel is tried at the Stoniton assizes in George Eliot's Adam Bede (Chapter XLIII, "The Verdict") for child murder. She says nothing in her own defence at any stage, so the prosecution case is wholly circumstantial.

Who Sarah Stone is

A widow who keeps a small shop licensed to sell tobacco, snuff and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton, and a complete stranger to the prisoner. Eliot introduces her in one sentence: "A woman was in the witness-box, a middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice."

Her testimony

1. The arrival. Hetty came on a Saturday evening looking ill and tired, with a basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging. Sarah Stone said she did not take lodgers; Hetty cried and said she was too tired to go anywhere else.

7. Why she did not report it. She had no thought the girl meant harm, knew she had money for food and lodging, and did not like to set the constable after her, "for she'd a right to go from me if she liked."

Analysis

1. It supplies the indispensable element: a live birth. Without proof that the child was born alive there is no death and no offence. 2. It is unanswerable, because she identifies her own needlework. There is nothing in it for cross-examination to attack, and Hetty's counsel, who did cross-examine, tried to elicit some sign of maternal affection and got nothing. 3. It is one half of a chain. John Olding proves a dead child concealed under timber-choppings; the clothes are the link, and Hetty's silence leaves the chain unbroken. 4. It contains the defence's best point. Eliot records that the effect on Adam Bede was electrical: Hetty had taken the baby with her and left the basket, so her heart must have clung to it. 5. It is devastating because it is kind. She is the one person in the novel who was good to Hetty, and hers is the evidence that convicts her.

Model answer

Aditi Sharma
14, Shanti Nivas, Dadar (West)
Mumbai 400028
aditi.sharma@email.com | +91 98XXXXXX21

4 May 2018

Box No. 1234
The Indian Express
Express Towers, Nariman Point
Mumbai 400021

Subject: Application for the post of Legal Assistant, advertised in The Indian Express of 28 April 2018

Sir/Madam,

I write in response to your advertisement in The Indian Express of 28 April 2018 inviting applications for the post of Legal Assistant, and I submit my application for your kind consideration.

Yours faithfully,
Aditi Sharma

Encl.: Bio-data

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BIO-DATA

Name: Aditi Sharma
Address: 14, Shanti Nivas, Dadar (West), Mumbai 400028
Contact: +91 98XXXXXX21 | aditi.sharma@email.com
Date of Birth: 3 July 1998

Educational Qualifications

Examination	Board / University	Year	Result
B.L.S. LL.B. (Sem I)	University of Mumbai	2018	Appearing
H.S.C.	Maharashtra State Board	2016	86%
S.S.C.	Maharashtra State Board	2014	91%

Experience: Four weeks with Adv. S. Nair, District Court, Mumbai, 2017.
Skills: Legal research, drafting, MS Office, typing 40 w.p.m.
Languages: English, Hindi, Marathi.
Activities: Moot Court Committee; college debating team.
References: Available on request.

Model answer

Aditi Sharma
Secretary, Shanti Nivas Co-operative Housing Society
14, Shanti Nivas, Dadar (West)
Mumbai 400028
+91 98XXXXXX21 | aditi.sharma@email.com

4 May 2018

The Ward Officer
G/North Ward, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai
Dadar (West), Mumbai 400028

Subject: Careless dumping of garbage at the Ranade Road collection point, and the danger to public health arising from it

Sir/Madam,

I write on behalf of the residents of Shanti Nivas and four adjoining buildings to report the careless dumping of garbage in our locality and the dangers it now poses, and to request your urgent intervention.

The dangers.
1. Disease. Standing waste in the pre-monsoon heat has bred flies and mosquitoes, and three cases of dengue have been reported in these buildings since 20 April.
2. Stray animals. Dogs and rodents scatter the waste each night across the width of the road, and two children have been bitten in the last month.
3. Injury. The suspected clinical waste includes glass and syringes. The safai karamcharis who clear this point are the people most at risk, and they have no equipment for handling it.
4. Obstruction and flooding. The heap has blocked the drain at the junction, which flooded twice last monsoon and will flood again.
5. Children. The footpath is the route to the municipal school on Ranade Road, and children are obliged to walk in the road to pass the heap.

Steps already taken. Complaints were lodged on the MCGM portal on 25 April 2018 (No. 118743) and 30 April 2018 (No. 121004), and the sanitary inspector was informed by telephone on 2 May. No vehicle has attended.

I therefore request that:

The present Indian position. In Bachan Singh v State of Punjab (1980) the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty by a majority and laid down the governing rule: it may be imposed only in the "rarest of rare" cases, where the alternative of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed. Life imprisonment is the rule and death the exception, and the court must record special reasons. Mithu v State of Punjab (1983) struck down a mandatory death sentence, because it removed the court's power to consider the offender. Both aggravating and mitigating circumstances must be weighed. There are safeguards after sentence: confirmation by the High Court, appeal to the Supreme Court, and the power of pardon under Articles 72 and 161; and inordinate delay in deciding a mercy petition is itself a ground for commutation (Shatrughan Chauhan, 2014).

The case for retention. Retribution proportionate to the gravest crimes; deterrence; incapacitation; and the argument that a State which does not punish the worst offences adequately invites private vengeance.

Model answer

What it means. Women's empowerment is the process by which women acquire the capacity and the freedom to make choices about their own lives and to act on them — over education, work, money, marriage, childbearing, movement and political voice. It is not a benefit conferred on women; it is the removal of obstacles to rights they already hold. The question offers a straight choice, and the honest answer refuses it: in India today empowerment is a reality in law and largely a myth in daily life.

The myth.
1. Female labour force participation is low and on some measures falling — the most stubborn statistic in the field.
2. Unpaid work: women do the overwhelming share of housework and care, neither counted nor shared.
3. Safety: violence at home and harassment in public remain widespread, with low conviction rates.
4. Son preference persists despite the PCPNDT Act, 1994.
5. The top — business leadership, the senior bar, the higher judiciary — remains thin even where entry-level numbers are equal.
6. Law outruns practice. A right a woman cannot enforce without money, time and family support is a right on paper.

Conclusion. Neither a myth nor an accomplished reality, but an unfinished process: the formal half is largely done, and what remains is harder, because it depends on changing households rather than statutes.

The bane.
1. Cybercrime: fraud, phishing, identity theft, ransomware, and the impersonation of banks and government offices.
2. Misinformation. Falsehood travels faster than correction, and forwarded rumours in India have led to lynchings.
3. Privacy. Personal data is collected, aggregated and sold, usually with a consent nobody reads.
4. Harm to children: harassment, grooming and exposure to material they cannot process.
5. Surveillance, by the State and by private platforms, of a kind no earlier society could have attempted.
6. The digital divide. Those without connectivity or literacy are excluded from services that have moved online, so a benefit for most becomes a barrier for some.