Recently, in a stern pronouncement against litigants who misuse the judicial process, the Bombay High Court has directed a plaintiff to pay Rs. 50 lakh as exemplary costs after finding that he had obtained an ex parte injunction in a trademark infringement suit by concealing material facts. Justice Arif Doctor held that the plaintiff, Shoban Salim Thakur, proprietor of M/s Family Footwear, had engaged in “gross suppression of material facts” and had “deliberately and systematically played fraud upon the Court” to secure an interim order against two Delhi-based traders.
The suit had been instituted by Thakur seeking a permanent injunction restraining Chaitanya Enterprises and Sonu Shah, proprietor of Sonu Enterprises, from using a mark allegedly similar to his registered trademark. On June 30, the Court granted an ex parte injunction restraining the defendants from manufacturing or selling footwear under the impugned mark, following which the court receiver seized several consignments belonging to the defendants.
The defendants subsequently moved the Court to vacate the injunction, alleging suppression of crucial facts. During the hearing, it was revealed that Thakur’s trademark registration under Class 25 was territorially confined to Maharashtra, that the defendants had been prior users of their mark since April 2022, and that Thakur had taken contradictory stands before the Trade Marks Registry. Justice Doctor noted that these were “three critical facts” that the plaintiff had failed to disclose.
The Court observed, “The deliberate and selective withholding of such material… is, in my view, clearly a fraud which has been played on this Court by the Plaintiff only to obtain the ex parte ad interim order.” The Court dismissed the plaintiff’s plea that the omissions were inadvertent, stating, “To even suggest this would, in my view, be an affront to the Court, and to condone such ‘inadvertence’ would amount to putting a premium on dishonesty.”
The Court also noted that even after the concealment was exposed, Thakur made no effort to limit the injunction to Maharashtra. Instead, he filed multiple affidavits alleging contempt against the defendants to “ensure that the ex parte ad interim order continued.” Justice Doctor found this conduct to be aggravating and observed that the plaintiff’s actions had effectively brought the defendants’ business “to a standstill.”
Invoking Section 35 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, as amended by the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, the Court imposed exemplary costs of Rs. 50 lakh, directing the plaintiff to pay Rs. 25 lakh each to the two defendants within four weeks.
Disclaimer: This news/ article includes information received via a syndicated news feed. The original rights remain with the respective publisher.
Picture Source :