Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It draws the line that keeps s. 13(b) from swallowing conclusiveness. Without it, every judgment debtor would argue the foreign case again in India under the label of the merits.
Facts
An Indian court was trying a suit on a foreign judgment, and was invited to consider whether the foreign court's decision was correct.
Held
It is not open to the court trying a suit on a foreign judgment to decide whether the decision of the foreign court was right or not. The duty of the court is merely to see that the foreign court applied its mind to the facts and to the law.
Reasoning
Step one — identify the two questions and keep them apart. Was this decided? is the s. 13(b) question. Was this decided correctly? is a question of appeal, which no forum entertains over a foreign court.
Step two — supply the working test. Application of mind to the facts and the law is a threshold, satisfied by a real adjudication however imperfect, and failed only where there was no adjudication at all — no evidence recorded, or a defence struck out and judgment entered without investigation.
Step three — connect it to the basis of enforcement. What is enforced is the obligation created by a competent court's adjudication. Any ground that negatives the obligation may be pleaded; dissatisfaction with the reasoning does not negative it.
Exam use
It opens: What is the extent of the inquiry permitted by s. 13(b)? — and it is the case that answers it.
Always present the clause as a pair of propositions. First, India does inquire, unlike England, and the inquiry is not nothing: Babu Nemi Chand v. Y.V. Rao and D.T. Kaymer v. P. Viswanathan show judgments failing it. Second, the inquiry is confined to application of mind, and this case draws that limit.
Use it to dispose of a problem cleanly. Where the facts show a full contested hearing and a reasoned judgment, say that clause (b) is satisfied whatever the errors alleged, and move to the clauses that might really be in play — competence under (a), fraud under (e), natural justice under (d).
Note the scheme once more. Section 13 is a rule of conclusiveness drafted as exceptions, so the burden lies on the party resisting; and s. 44A(3) carries the same six exceptions into execution, requiring a District Court to refuse execution of a decree from a reciprocating territory if any of them is shown.
It does not decide what happens where the foreign court applied its mind to the facts but was misled about them; that is fraud, and belongs to clause (e).