Lawyers can’t argue for days, says apex court

Lawyers can’t argue for days, says apex court

Limits Time For Counsel

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:

The decades long exasperating wait for commoners in labyrinthine queues for justice forced the Supreme Court on Wednesday to take the first step towards allocating strict time schedule, as practiced by the Supreme Courts of the US and the UK, with a warning that violation of time limits would result in automatic indefinite adjournment of hearing.

A bench of Justices Sanjay K Kaul and R S Reddy allotted 30 minutes each to senior advocates A M Singhvi and Arvind Datar appearing for petitioner Yatin Oza, one hour to Gujarat HC counsel Nikhil Goel and 15 mins to a intervenor represented by senior advocate C S Sundaram. Oza has challenged a Gujarat HC decision to strip him of senior advocate designation finding him repeatedly making vituperative comments against judges and the judiciary, The case has been pending for nearly a year before the SC and has reached a stalemate with the Gujarat HC remaining adamant and refusing to reconsider—even with the SC's prodding—its decision to strip Oza of the senior advocate designation. The HC conveyed to the SC that in its June 20 Full Court meeting it has reiterated its decision, refusing to show leniency to Oza.

Preparing the case for final hearing, the bench said it would not permit the counsel for parties to go on arguing for days. "How do we justify the pendency of decades old cases by common citizens and then devoting hours and hours together to hear arguments from senior advocates in current cases? Even in the UK or the US Supreme Courts, we do not think there is any system which permits lawyers to argue for hours together."

Justice Kaul said, "In the US Supreme Court, the counsel are permitted only to cite judgments and not read it. But, here the advocates cite 20 judgements for each proposition and try to make good their argument by reading all 20 judgments." The bench told the counsel that they must choose the best of the judgments suiting their propositions and cite one judgment per proposition.