The Gujarat High Court has said that non-communication of a judgement by the lawyer to the party cannot disadvantage the latter resulting in rejection of appeal on ground of delay when the very lawyer has filed the appeal, specially in absence of gross negligence.

The court was hearing a man's plea challenging an appellate court's order refusing to condone 27 day delay in filing an appeal against district judge's order in a civil suit.

Justice Maulik J Shelat observed that the main reason for delay in filing the appeal was that the petitioner was not informed about the judgment by his advocate and such fact remained uncontroverted, as no reply was filed.

To this, the court noted, that the Appellate Court took a serious note of the fact that the advocate who represented the petitioner before trial Court, has preferred the appeal. The court said,

"It is unfathomable that how the fact of non-communication of the judgement at relevant time by an advocate would be disadvantage to the petitioner in a case where the appeal was filed by the very advocate. It is one thing to say that the advocate concerned has not timely intimated about the judgment and it is another thing that very advocate might have file appeal on behalf of the party. Such a pedantic approach on the part of Appellate Court cannot be countenanced by this Court, inasmuch as it is well settled law that while adjudicating the delay application, liberal approach requires to be taken and sufficient cause is to be construed liberally by the Court, thereby it can decide the lis on merit...

The case at hand would not show that there was any negligent act and/or inordinate delay on the part of petitioner in filing the regular civil appeal before the Appellate Court; rather, non-condoning the delay by the Appellate Court would cause serious prejudiced to the petitioner who deprived to pursue his legal remedy by way of the appeal. The regular civil appeal is a statutory remedy available to the petitioner and such right of appeal should not be taken away by the Court by taking hyper-technical view in the matter. The Appellate Court could have taken note of the said fact and position of law while adjudicating the delay application. Prima facie, it appears that the Appellate Court has lost sight of such position of law resulted into rejection of the delay application".

After going through the appellate court's order the high court noted that "prima facie" appeared that the appellate court had taken a "very hyper technical approach" while adjudicating the delay application.

The court said that indisputably, there was no gross and inordinate delay on the petitioner's part in filing the regular civil appeal.

The court said that the principles laid down by the Supreme Court referred to by the Appellate Court in its judgement, would not be applicable to the present case, as there was "neither any negligence nor was an inordinate delay" on the part of the petitioner in filing the appeal. Further the respondent chose not to respond to the condonation application but orally opposed it.

"In such situation, it can be said that facts which were mentioned in impugned delay application remained uncontroverted by the respondent," the high court said.

The court was of the view that this was a case where without issuing notice to the respondent, the High Court can condone delay of 27 days in filing Regular Civil Appeal by the petitioner. It however left it open for the respondent to file an appropriate application for recalling/modification of the order in a month.

Quashing the order, the court asked the appellate court to register the appeal adding that it will be decided on its own merits after hearing the parties without being influenced by high court's order.

Case title: LILABEN D/O LALLUBHAI BHULABHAI ZALA W/O KALUBHAI PRATAPSINH ZALA v/s DASHRATHSINH AMARSINH ZALA & ORS.

R/SPECIAL CIVIL APPLICATION NO. 13169 of 2026

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