The Bench noted that receiving the gift would serve as a gesture of goodwill and erase any misunderstanding or ill will that may have embedded itself in the mind of the junior advocate.
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IN a heartwarming incident, the Bombay High Court recently came to the rescue of a junior advocate who was blamed by her senior for the dismissal of a petition.
No one, neither the junior nor the senior, had appeared for the appellant, which resulted in the dismissal of the appeal.
A division Bench comprising Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyay and Justice Arif. S. Doctor expressed its displeasure at the application seeking to restore the petition while putting the blame on the junior advocate.
The junior had enrolled as an advocate less than two months before the date on which the appeal was dismissed.
“We find it most unfortunate that the appellant’s advocate-on-record has sought to lay the blame for non-appearance at the hands of a junior advocate, who had in fact enrolled as an advocate less than two months before the date on which the said appeal came to be dismissed,” the Bench stated.
“What is worse still is that the said junior advocate has been made to file an affidavit stating that the inadvertence was at her end,” the Bench said.
The application seeking to restore the appeal put the blame of non-appearance of the appellant’s counsel on the junior advocate.
The application averred that the junior has been entrusted with checking the causelist but failed to inform the appellant’s advocate that the matter was listed on the weekly list for the period from December 15, 2022 to December 16, 2022.
Sensing the mood of the Bench, the advocate for the petitioner tendered an apology to the court and submitted that the appellant would immediately expunge the name of the junior advocate from the application.
The Bench, though, allowed the restoration application, but also directed the advocate for the appellant to gift a copy of The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation by Granville Austin to the junior advocate, in place of costs in the conventional sense which ought to have been imposed on the appellant.
The Bench noted that this would serve as a gesture of goodwill and erase any misunderstanding or ill will that may have embedded itself in the mind of the junior advocate.
Junior advocates in India work under extreme pressure. They have to work long hours and are usually not paid enough to make ends meet.
Seniors have almost total control over the professional lives of juniors and the latter accept these working conditions to gain precious experience which will one day put them on the other side of the big divide.
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