Pleadings and Amendment Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The court may strike out such pleadings at any stage of proceedings.

Order VI Rule 16 of the Code of Civil Procedure lets the court, at any stage of the proceedings, order to be struck out or amended any matter in a pleading that is unnecessary, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious, that may tend to prejudice, embarrass or delay the fair trial, or that is otherwise an abuse of the process of the court.

The court does not simply ignore the averments, its power is not postponed until the trial begins, and rejection of the whole plaint is a separate remedy under Order VII Rule 11 for defects such as a plaint disclosing no cause of action.

Answer: D

All three grounds are valid grounds for rejection of a plaint, so the answer is 1, 2 and 3. Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure lists rejection where the plaint does not disclose a cause of action, where the relief claimed is undervalued and the plaintiff does not correct the valuation within the time fixed by the court, where the plaint is insufficiently stamped, and where the suit appears from the plaint to be barred by any law, which includes limitation.

The options limiting the answer to Only 1, Only 2, or Only 2 and 3 leave out valid grounds from the Rule.

Answer: C

The reason why a suit has been filed, consisting of the essential facts the plaintiff must prove to win and forming the foundation of the suit before it is filed, is the cause of action. A plaint that does not disclose one is liable to be rejected under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The plaint is the document in which the plaintiff states his claim and the cause of action, the written statement is the defendant's reply, and pleadings is the general name for plaint and written statement together. They are therefore documents, not the reason for suing.

Answer: B

The plaint and the written statement of the parties are together called the pleadings. Order VI of the Code of Civil Procedure defines pleading as meaning a plaint or a written statement.

A suit is the whole proceeding begun by presenting a plaint, an action is a general term for legal proceedings, and a plaint is only the plaintiff's document, so it is only one half of the pleadings.

Answer: A

Pleadings and applications are to be written in Hindi.

Hindi in Devanagari script is the language of the subordinate civil courts in Rajasthan, and the General Rules (Civil), 1986, framed by the Rajasthan High Court for those courts, require pleadings, applications and petitions filed in civil judicial proceedings to be written in Hindi.

English is the language of the High Court, not of the subordinate courts under these rules, and the rules do not leave the choice open to any Eighth Schedule language.

Answer: B

Rejection of the plaint does not, of its own force, preclude the plaintiff from presenting a fresh plaint.

Order VII Rule 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 says exactly this: the rejection of the plaint on any of the grounds in Rule 11 shall not of its own force preclude the plaintiff from presenting a fresh plaint in respect of the same cause of action.

Res judicata needs a decision on the merits, which a rejection is not. Order XXIII deals with withdrawal and compromise of suits, and its bar applies to a suit withdrawn without leave, not to a rejected plaint.