The Madras High Court has imposed a cost of `25,000 on a ‘cunning litigant’ for filing a frivolous writ petition challenging the appointment of Lizamma Augustine as the judicial member of the Company Law Board (CLB) here.
“To serve as an eye-opener for cunning litigants like the petitioner, we impose the cost,’’ a division bench comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice M Venugopal said on October 5.
Sudhir Sirsi, MD of Shree Mahabaleswarara Auto Industries Private Limited in Bangalore, should remit the amount to the TN State Legal Services Authority within two weeks, the bench said. and added that this case would show how the heat of personal enmity between the clients was being turned towards the judicial officers by a clever and cunning litigant, ignoring all the legal dicta and the judicial conventions, thus indulging in threatening measures against the judicial officers, the bench said.
There was a dispute between company MD Sudhir Sirsi and S Shridhar, who joined the company in 1999 as one of the directors. Shridhar came out of the company in 2000 and lodged criminal complaints against Sirsi and also filed a suit before the city civil court in Bangalore in 2003. He also filed a company petition before the Company Law Board in Chennai in 2007 against Sirsi and other directors of the company. The company raised preliminary objections and the matter was pending before the CLB.
As no order was passed on the company petition, Sirsi filed the present writ petition. Meanwhile, the CLB passed final orders on the company petition in January, 2011. After holding that the appointment of Augustine was perfect and in accordance with the rules, the bench diismissed Sirsi’s writ petition with cost.