When two Supreme Court judgments appear inconsistent, how should a High Court decide which one to follow? A recent ruling offers guidance.
A bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan held that High Courts should not simply choose one ruling over the other but must attempt to reconcile both decisions and follow the one whose facts align more closely with the case before them.
“If two decisions of this Court appear inconsistent with each other, the High Courts are not to follow one and overlook the other but should try to reconcile and respect them both… and follow that decision whose facts appear more in accord with those of the case at hand,” the Court observed.
The judgment, authored by Justice Pardiwala, cited Lord Halsbury’s principle from Quinn v. Leathern, 1901 AC 495 at p.506, later reaffirmed by the Privy Council in Punjab Cooperative Bank Ltd. v. Commissioner of Income Tax, Lahore AIR 1940 PC 230:
“Every judgment must be read as applicable to the particular facts proved or assumed to be proved, since the generality of the expressions found therein are not intended to be expositions of the whole law but are governed or qualified by the particular facts of the case in which such expressions are found.”
Earlier Supreme Court View: Follow the Older Judgment
However, in earlier rulings, the Supreme Court has held that when confronted with conflicting precedents from benches of equal strength, the High Court must follow the earlier judgment.
In UT of Ladakh v. Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, the Supreme Court ruled:
“When faced with conflicting judgments by Benches of equal strength of this Court, it is the earlier one which is to be followed by the High Courts, as held by a 5-Judge Bench in National Insurance Company Limited v. Pranay Sethi, (2017) 16 SCC 6805. The High Courts, of course, will do so with careful regard to the facts and circumstances of the case before them.”
Related Observations: Writ Jurisdiction & Disputed Facts
The judgment also touched upon Article 226, emphasizing that the mere existence of disputed questions of fact does not preclude a writ court from exercising its jurisdiction to grant relief.
Case Name: M/S A.P. Electrical Equipment Corporation v. The Tahsildar & Ors. Etc., Civil Appeal Nos. 4526-4527 of 2024
