BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 5 Legal Language 2018-19 Question Paper with Solutions

He was caught stealing, and he was punished.

It was a very wonderful sight.

(Equally acceptable: That was a very grand sight.)

He is greater than I.

(Also accepted in ordinary usage: He is greater than I am, or He is greater than me.)

Law Teller is an Indian monthly law magazine published from Delhi, written for the general reader and for students rather than for practitioners. Any two of the following are features of it:

1. It reports and digests recent judgments of the Supreme Court and the High Courts in plain, non-technical English, so that a reader without legal training can follow what was decided and why.
2. Its purpose is legal awareness rather than legal citation. It carries articles on the everyday law a citizen meets: consumer protection, tenancy, matrimonial disputes, service matters, cheque dishonour, motor accident claims, the rights of an arrested person.
3. It carries a readers' query column, in which questions sent in by readers on their own legal problems are answered by advocates.
4. It is a monthly, priced for a general readership, and includes legal news, notifications and amendments as well as case summaries.

Read as a whole: the case of Raj Bhagat against Anita Singh, decided by the Supreme Court of India and reported at page 1523 of the 2009 volume of the All India Reporter.

The leading case is Ashby v. White (1703). A qualified voter was wrongfully prevented by a returning officer from casting his vote; the candidate he wished to vote for was elected in any event, so the plaintiff suffered no loss whatever. Chief Justice Holt held that he had an action nonetheless, saying that if the plaintiff has a right he must of necessity have a means to vindicate it, and that want of a remedy is want of a right. This is the classic authority for the proposition that injury to a legal right is actionable without proof of damage.

The two maxims that must be read with it:

• Injuria sine damno, injury without damage: the violation of a legal right without actual loss. This is actionable, and Ashby v. White is the illustration. Torts actionable per se, trespass, libel, assault, fall here.
• Damnum sine injuria, damage without injury: actual loss without the violation of any legal right. This is not actionable. In Gloucester Grammar School case a schoolmaster set up a rival school and the plaintiff's fees fell from 40 pence to 12; no action lay, because competition violates no legal right. Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, Gow & Co. is the modern statement of the same rule.

The maxim, printed on the paper as "De Minimus", is properly de minimis non curat lex, and means "the law does not concern itself with trifles." It states that the law will not take notice of very small or trivial matters, and that a court will refuse a remedy where the injury complained of is so slight that no reasonable person would think it worth complaining about.

Why the rule exists. Litigation is expensive and courts are a scarce public resource. If every trivial interference were actionable, the courts would be occupied with the removal of a single leaf from a neighbour's tree, and genuine claims would wait behind them. The maxim is a rule of judicial economy and of common sense, not a licence to inflict small wrongs.

Illustrations of its operation:

• In criminal law, the Indian Penal Code, 1860, contained in its General Exceptions a provision that nothing is an offence by reason that it causes, or is intended to cause, harm so slight that no person of ordinary sense and temper would complain of it; the corresponding provision has been carried into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. This is the maxim in statutory form.

The maxim, printed on the paper as "Res Ipsa Loquitor", is properly res ipsa loquitur and means "the thing speaks for itself." It is a rule of evidence in the law of negligence: where an accident is of such a kind that it would not ordinarily have happened without negligence, and the thing that caused it was under the exclusive control of the defendant, the accident itself is evidence of negligence, and the plaintiff need not prove the specific act or omission which caused it.

The three conditions, taken from Scott v. London and St Katherine Docks Co. (1865), in which bags of sugar fell from a warehouse on to a customs officer passing below:

1. The thing causing the damage must be under the control of the defendant or his servants;
2. the accident must be such as would not in the ordinary course of things happen if those in control had used proper care; and
3. there must be no explanation of how the accident happened, that is, the cause must be unknown to the plaintiff.

A writ is a formal written order issued by a court commanding the person to whom it is addressed to do or to refrain from doing a specified act. In Indian constitutional law the term refers to the five prerogative writs which the Supreme Court may issue under Article 32 and the High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution.

The two jurisdictions differ, and the difference is worth stating first:

• Article 32 empowers the Supreme Court to issue writs only for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights. The right to move the Supreme Court under Article 32 is itself a fundamental right, which may be suspended only as the Constitution provides.
• Article 226 empowers the High Courts to issue writs for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights and "for any other purpose", that is, for the enforcement of ordinary legal rights as well. The High Court's writ jurisdiction is therefore wider than the Supreme Court's, though its territorial reach is limited.

The five writs:

4. Certiorari, "to be certified". Issued to an inferior court or tribunal to quash an order already passed in excess of jurisdiction, in violation of natural justice, or vitiated by an error of law apparent on the face of the record. It is curative, where prohibition is preventive, and it issues after the order.
5. Quo warranto, "by what authority". Issued against a person holding a public office, calling on him to show by what authority he holds it. If the answer is unsatisfactory the office is declared vacant. It lies only in respect of a substantive public office of a permanent character created by statute or by the Constitution.

1. Regular bail, granted to a person already in custody.
2. Anticipatory bail, a direction that in the event of arrest the applicant shall be released on bail, granted by the Sessions Court or the High Court in apprehension of arrest, under what was Section 438 of the Code. In Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia v. State of Punjab (1980) the Supreme Court held that the power is not to be read narrowly and need not ordinarily be limited in time; in Sushila Aggarwal v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2020) a Constitution Bench confirmed that anticipatory bail need not be for a fixed period and can continue until the end of the trial.
3. Default or statutory bail, the indefeasible right of an accused to be released if the investigating agency fails to file its report within the prescribed period, ordinarily 60 or 90 days depending on the punishment. This is bail earned by the prosecution's delay, not by the merits of the case.
4. Interim bail, granted for a short period while a bail application is pending.

Conditions. The court may require the accused to attend as directed, not to tamper with evidence or influence witnesses, not to leave the jurisdiction without permission, and to surrender his passport. Bail once granted may be cancelled if it is misused.

The question is about method: how the search is conducted, and what it yields.

Step 1. Frame the issue and fix the search terms. The issue is: can an agreement signed by a person below the age of majority be enforced against him? The terms to search under are minor, minority, majority, competency to contract, void ab initio, voidable, enforceability, estoppel, necessaries.

Step 2. Start with the statute, because it fixes the vocabulary. Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, requires parties to be competent to contract; Section 11 provides that a person is competent if he is of the age of majority according to the law to which he is subject, of sound mind and not disqualified; the Indian Majority Act, 1875, fixes majority at eighteen. Note that the sections say who is competent and not what happens if an incompetent person contracts, which is the gap the case law fills.

• he cannot ratify it on attaining majority, because ratification requires something valid to relate back to, and a fresh promise to perform it is without consideration;
• specific performance cannot be ordered against him.

Step 6. Collect the qualifications, which is what the later cases supply.

• A minor may enforce a contract made for his benefit; the disability is a shield and not a sword.
• His estate is liable for necessaries supplied to him suited to his condition in life, under Section 68 of the Contract Act. This is a quasi-contractual liability against the estate, not a contractual liability of the minor.
• There is no estoppel against a minor who misrepresents his age, but a court may apply the equitable doctrine of restitution and require him to restore the property or money if it is still traceable and identifiable, though it will not order him to pay out of his general estate.
• A minor may act as an agent, and may be admitted to the benefits of a partnership under Section 30 of the Indian Partnership Act, 1932.

What a multinational is. A multinational corporation (MNC), or transnational corporation, is an enterprise which owns or controls production or service facilities in more than one country. It has a parent company in a home country and subsidiaries, branches or joint ventures in host countries, and it plans its production, sourcing, finance and marketing on a global rather than a national basis. Unilever, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Suzuki, Samsung, Microsoft and Amazon are examples familiar in India.

The Indian setting. Foreign enterprise was tightly restricted after the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973, which capped foreign equity and led some companies to leave India. The position changed with the economic liberalisation of 1991, which dismantled industrial licensing, opened most sectors to foreign direct investment and replaced FERA with the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. India today receives among the largest inflows of foreign direct investment in the developing world.

The case that they are a boon.

1. Repatriation of profit. Dividends, royalties and technical fees flow out, and over a long enough period the outflow can exceed the original inflow.
2. They can destroy domestic industry. A small local producer cannot match the capital, brand and distribution of a multinational, and market share is lost before it can respond.
3. Transfer pricing and tax avoidance. By pricing transactions between their own subsidiaries, multinationals can shift profit to low-tax jurisdictions. This is the central problem of modern international taxation, and it is why India legislated transfer-pricing rules, the General Anti-Avoidance Rule and the equalisation levy, and why the OECD's base erosion and profit shifting project and the global minimum tax exist.
4. Political influence. Enterprises whose turnover exceeds the budgets of the states they operate in can influence policy, and the influence is not exercised in public.

Conclusion. The question is not whether multinationals are good or bad but whether the host state is strong enough to regulate them. Where competition law, tax administration, environmental enforcement and labour inspection function, multinational investment is a substantial net gain. Where they do not, the same investment produces enclaves that take out more than they leave behind. The variable is the quality of the regulation, not the nationality of the capital.

The declared objects were four: to extinguish unaccounted "black" money held in cash; to destroy counterfeit currency, said to be used to finance terrorism; to force transactions into the banking system; and to hasten the move to a less-cash economy.

The case that it was good.

1. Deposits surged and accounts came under scrutiny. Cash that had never touched a bank had to be deposited, creating a record that the tax authorities could examine, and a large number of notices followed.
2. The tax base widened. The number of income tax returns filed rose in the following years.
3. Digital payment accelerated sharply. The growth of UPI dates from this period, and India now runs one of the largest real-time retail payment systems in the world.
4. Counterfeit notes of the withdrawn series became worthless overnight, and cash stockpiles used in some illegal activity were disrupted.
5. It signalled political will, which has a value of its own in tax compliance.

The case that it was evil.

The legal verdict. In Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union of India (2023) a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the notification by four to one. The majority held that "any series" in Section 26(2) includes all series of a denomination, that the required consultation between the Bank and the Government had taken place, and that the Court would not sit in judgment on economic policy. Justice B. V. Nagarathna dissented, holding that a measure of this width required primary legislation rather than an executive notification, and that the proposal had in fact originated with the Central Government rather than with the Central Board of the Bank as the section contemplates. She expressly declined to express any view on whether the object was achieved.

Conclusion. The legality is settled and the wisdom is not. On the evidence now available, demonetization succeeded in accelerating digital payment and in widening the tax net, and failed in its principal declared object of extinguishing unaccounted cash, at a cost borne disproportionately by the poorest part of the economy. It was neither purely good nor purely evil; it was a blunt instrument that achieved its secondary objects and missed its first.

3. catchwords and a headnote, summarising the facts and the propositions decided, written by the editor;
4. the cases cited and referred to;
5. the counsel who appeared;
6. a statement of the facts and the procedural history;
7. the judgments verbatim, including any dissent;
8. the order and the direction as to costs.

Two law reports, described.

(1) All India Reporter (AIR). Founded at Nagpur in 1914 by V. V. Chitaley, AIR is the oldest continuously published general law report in India and the most widely cited. It reports the Supreme Court, the High Courts, and historically the Federal Court and the Privy Council, in separate court-wise volumes, along with Central and State legislation. Its citation style puts the year first, without brackets: AIR 2009 SC 1523. Its companion publications include the Criminal Law Journal and the AIR Manual, a subject-arranged consolidation of Indian statutes with case annotations, which is the standard starting point of a legal search. AIR is a private publication.

Citation. D. K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, AIR 1997 SC 610, (1997) 1 SCC 416, decided by Justice Kuldip Singh and Justice A. S. Anand.

Facts. D. K. Basu, Executive Chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, a non-political organisation, wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India in 1986, drawing attention to newspaper reports of deaths in police lock-ups and in custody, and asking that the letter be treated as a writ petition under the Court's epistolary jurisdiction. It was so treated. A second letter, from Ashok K. Johri about a custodial death at Aligarh, was heard with it. The Court issued notice to all State Governments and to the Law Commission, and over the following decade received affidavits showing that custodial deaths were continuing.

Issues.

1. Whether custodial death, torture and lock-up violence infringe Articles 21 and 22(1) of the Constitution.

2. The arresting officer shall prepare a memo of arrest at the time of arrest, attested by at least one witness, being a family member of the arrestee or a respectable person of the locality, and countersigned by the arrestee, bearing the date and time of arrest.
3. A person arrested or detained is entitled to have one friend, relative or other person known to him informed, as soon as practicable, of the arrest and of the place of detention.
4. Where the next friend or relative lives outside the district, the time and place of arrest and the venue of custody must be notified through the Legal Aid Organisation of the district and the police station of the area, telegraphically, within 8 to 12 hours of the arrest.
5. The person arrested must be made aware of this right as soon as he is arrested or detained.
6. An entry must be made in the diary at the place of detention, recording the arrest, the name of the person informed and the particulars of the police officials in whose custody the arrestee is.
7. The arrestee shall, on request, be examined at the time of arrest and any injuries recorded; the "Inspection Memo" must be signed by the arrestee and the arresting officer, and a copy supplied to the arrestee.

Compensation. The Court held that monetary compensation is an appropriate and effective public law remedy for an established infringement of Article 21; that this is distinct from a private law claim in tort; that it rests on strict liability, to which the defence of sovereign immunity does not apply; and that the State may recover the sum from the officer responsible. This followed Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa (1993).

Aftermath. The guidelines were substantially enacted into the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, by the amendment of 2008, which inserted Section 41B (identification and memo of arrest), Section 41D (right to meet an advocate during interrogation), Section 50A (duty to inform a nominated person) and Section 55A (duty to care for the health and safety of the accused). The Code has since been replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which carries these safeguards forward. The Court returned to the subject in 2015, directing the installation of CCTV cameras in police stations, a direction taken further in Paramvir Singh Saini v. Baljit Singh (2020).

1. Whether an enterprise carrying on a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity is liable on the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher with its recognised exceptions, or on a stricter principle.
2. Whether a private corporation carrying on such an activity is "other authority" within Article 12, so that a writ under Article 32 lies against it.
3. Whether the Supreme Court may award compensation in its writ jurisdiction under Article 32, or must leave the victims to a civil suit.
4. On what basis the quantum of compensation should be fixed.

The decision and the guidelines.

1. The rule of absolute liability, which is the heart of the case: where an enterprise is engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity and harm results to anyone on account of an accident in the operation of that activity, the enterprise is strictly and absolutely liable to compensate all those affected, and the liability is not subject to any of the exceptions which operate against the tortious principle of strict liability under Rylands v. Fletcher.

The three reasons the Court gave:

4. Article 12. The Court noted the argument that Shriram might be "other authority", but expressly declined to decide the question, since the applications could be disposed of without it. Say this: many scripts wrongly assert that the Court held a private company to be "State".

5. Directions on the plant. By an earlier order the Court had permitted the caustic chlorine plant to restart subject to stringent conditions recommended by expert committees: inspection by an expert committee, an operator on site, a safety siren, a bank guarantee of Rs 20 lakh against future escapes, and undertakings from the management carrying personal liability.

6. A specialised forum. The Court observed that such cases raise questions of scientific and technical fact and suggested the setting up of environment courts with professional judges assisted by experts. That suggestion was realised much later in the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010.

The Arctic ice cover will continue to shrink through the 21st century with rising greenhouse gas emissions. The potential reduction in Arctic ice, resultant rise in water levels and the possibilities of new sea lanes.

Changes in the polar ice cap can alter life on earth for the worse, bringing more frequent hot spells, unless the annual rate of greenhouse gas emissions is halted and even reversed. The passage also links the shrinking of Arctic ice to a rise in water levels and to the opening of new sea lanes.

(iii) What is the central focus of the author in the passage about the drastic effects of climatic change?

The author's central focus is the fear that the Arctic Ocean may become ice-free in summer, which the passage says can become a reality if global temperature rises by more than 2 degrees Celsius over current levels. Around that central fear the author places three consequences: the continued shrinking of the Arctic ice cover through the twenty-first century as greenhouse gas emissions rise, the resulting rise in water levels, and the possibility of new sea lanes opening where there was ice.

(iv) What are the predictions of scientists as given in the passage?

The scientists predict that hot spells will increase globally and that the number of hot days will go up over the next few decades. The passage adds that these predictions are probabilistic, that is, they are statements of likelihood rather than of certainty; it says of the forecasts only that it "is likely" that this will happen.