Rejection of plaint is impermissible where limitation involves triable mixed questions of law and fact.

The Plaintiff (Geekay Enterprises) filed a suit in 2021 seeking a declaration of its rights to develop the suit property under a Development Agreement (DA) dated October 28, 1997, executed with Defendant No. 1

The Plaintiff also sought recovery of sums paid, damages of approx. ₹308 crores, and an injunction against third-party interests

Defendant No. 7 (Applicant) moved an application under Order VII Rule 11 of the CPC for rejection of the plaint, arguing the suit was barred by limitation and lacked a cause of action

The Applicant contended that the Plaintiff had knowledge of a 2010 decree (in L.C. Suit No. 2257 of 2004) which restrained Defendant No. 1 from dispossessing the Applicant, yet waited until 2021 to file the suit

The Plaintiff alleged that the 2004 suit was a "collusive" action between defendants to defeat the Plaintiff’s subsisting rights under the 1997 DA, which was never terminated

1. Whether the plaint is liable to be rejected under Order VII Rule 11(d) of the CPC as being ex-facie barred by the law of limitation

2. Whether the cause of action pleaded by the Plaintiff is illusory or a result of "clever drafting" intended to circumvent the Limitation Act

The court primarily applied Order VII Rule 11(a) and (d) of the CPC regarding the rejection of a plaint for lack of cause of action or being barred by law

It evaluated the limitation periods under Articles 47 (refund of consideration), 55 (compensation for breach of contract), and 58 (declaration) of the Limitation Act, 1963

The court relied on the Supreme Court’s rulings in Ramesh B. Desai v. Bipin Mehta, which established that limitation is a mixed question of law and fact and cannot be decided as a preliminary issue if it depends on evidence

The court relied on Vinod Infra Developers Ltd. v. Mahaveer Lunia, which held that a plaint cannot be rejected in its entirety if some reliefs are maintainable based on independent causes of action

The court observed that while Defendant No. 7 argued the limitation began in 2010 upon the Plaintiff gaining knowledge of the previous decree, the Plaintiff’s case was built on a "bundle of facts" involving a checkered history of title transfers and allegations of a collusive inter-se litigation between defendants

The court reasoned that a stray sentence in the plaint regarding knowledge of the 2010 decree cannot be isolated to hold the suit barred by limitation while ignoring exhaustive pleadings regarding the continuous nature of the cause of action and the subsistence of the 1997 agreement

Following the principle in Nusli Neville Wadia, the court held that a plaint can only be rejected at the threshold if the bar of limitation is apparent from the face of the averments without requiring further evidence

In this instance, because the Plaintiff claims the contract is still valid and the inter-se decree was fraudulent, the "right to sue" involves triable issues that necessitate a full-fledged trial

It held that the question of limitation in this specific case is a mixed question of law and fact that cannot be determined at a preliminary stage

The court concluded that since the pleadings disclose a cause of action and raise triable issues regarding the accrual of the right to sue, the Plaintiff is entitled to lead evidence to prove the suit is within the limitation period