The Patna Case (1777)

The Patna Case is the high-water mark of the Supreme Court's assertion of authority over the Company. Kamaluddin and Saroop Chand touched the revenue officers' treatment of a prisoner. Patna went further: it held the Company's judicial officers personally liable for what they had done in the course of their appointment.

It matters for a second reason. It is the case the Act of Settlement 1781 answered by declaring natives immune from the Supreme Court, and the objection to that provision is best made through these facts — the one forum that had held the Company's law officers liable was closed to precisely the people who needed it.

State the ratio before the facts in an answer: the case showed that the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to try judicial officers of the Company for acts done in the course of their appointment.

S. B. Khan came from Kabul, joined the army and earned a large fortune. He settled at Patna with his wife Nadirah and had no children. His nephew Bahadur was brought from Kabul and Khan wished to adopt him, but died before the adoption. A dispute over the property arose between the widow and the nephew.

The nephew petitioned the Provincial Council at Patna, claiming the property as adopted son. The Council appointed its own law officers — a Kazi and a Mufti — to make an inventory. The proceeding was ex parte; the widow had no notice. The law officers went to her house, ill-treated her, and made the inventory irregularly. They reported that the will and the gift executed by Khan were forgeries, and recommended that the property be divided into four parts with one part to the widow. The Provincial Court at Patna ordered division on that footing.

The widow sued in the Supreme Court at Calcutta.

The Supreme Court issued a writ of capias, and all the defendants — the law officers and the nephew — were arrested and detained.

It held that the law officers had acted in an irregular manner and that their report was false, vexatious and unjustified. It held the will and the gift-deed to be valid. It awarded three lakhs as damages, and punished the officers as corrupt.

The decision was afterwards neutralised by the Act of Settlement 1781.

Notice precisely what the court was and was not doing, because the distinction is the answer to the Council's objection.

1. The court was not reviewing a revenue demand. Nothing in the case concerned the assessment or collection of revenue, so the Council's standing ground of objection did not fit.
2. The subject-matter was a private succession dispute between a widow and a claimant to adoption — ordinary civil business.
3. The wrong was done by officers of the Company acting in the course of their appointment: an ex parte inventory made without notice, accompanied by ill-treatment, and a report the court found false and vexatious.
4. From that the court drew the liability: office is no shield where the officer's own act is irregular and corrupt. The remedy followed the wrong — the impugned instruments were upheld, damages were given, and the officers were punished.

It is the authority for the proposition that the Supreme Court had jurisdiction over the Company's judicial officers for acts done in the course of their appointment. State that sentence first; then use the facts only as far as they support it.

Use it to explain why the response of 1781 was so sweeping. The Regulating Act had never made clear whether the Company in its revenue capacity was amenable to the court; Patna answered that the Company's officers, at least, were. The third provision of the Act of Settlement — that natives were immune — is the answer to Patna, and this is the case to cite in criticism of that Act.

Use it to rank the escalation: Kamaluddin and Saroop Chand reach the revenue officers' treatment of a prisoner, Patna reaches the Company's judicial officers, Cossijurah reaches the Governor-General.

What it does not decide: it does not decide whether Zamindars employed in revenue collection were subject to the court, which is the question in Cossijurah's Case; and it settles nothing about the court's power over revenue as a subject-matter.