Jammu and Kashmir High Court closes contempt of court case against Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas

The High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh recently closed the suo motu contempt of court case initiated against law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co (SAM) for allegedly misquoting a judgment in a legal notice issued by it on behalf of a client. .The bench of Justices Sanjeev Kumar and Moksha Khajuria Kazmi said that a bona fide interpretation of a Court judgment, even if differing from Court’s intended meaning, generally does not constitute contempt of court as long as the interpretation is not willful or deliberate and does not obstruct the course of justice. The Court found SAM's legal notice to be bona fide, with no intention to distort the meaning of the judgment in question."The alleged offending legal notice only conveys the bonafide understanding of a judgment passed by this Court without there being any intention to willfully distort the judgment to mislead a Court of law. Offending legal notice is in the nature of a communication from one company to another, sent through law-firm, that too, at a time when no litigation between the parties was pending in any Court of law." .At the cost of repetition, we must say that the notice was issued at a time when there were no judicial proceedings pending between the parties in any Court of law.High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.A single judge of the High Court had on January 2 ordered the initiation of suo motu contempt proceedings against SAM for "misconceived and perverted reference to the judgment dated 01.02.2010 of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir" in the legal notice.In the judgment passed on March 13, the division bench said that the single judge had not opined that the issuance of legal notice by the firm scandalised or was intended to scandalise the authority of any Court."Since, in the year 2022, when the legal notice in question was issued by the respondent on behalf of its client Sawalkote Consortium, there were no proceedings pending in any Court and, therefore, the question of legal notice, causing any prejudice or interference with the due course of judicial proceedings, also did not arise," the Court further said.The Court also ruled that the contents of the legal notice did not either interfere or have the tendency to interfere with, or have the tendency to obstruct the administration of justice in any other manner..The legal notice had been issued on behalf of Sawalkote Consortium to National Hydro Electric Power Corporation Limited (NHPCL). The same was subject to examination and appreciation by NHPCL with the help of its legal experts, the Court observed. "The NHPCL has not complained of having deliberately and intentionally misled by the legal notice," it added.It concluded that the legal notice did not disclose the commission of criminal contempt as defined under Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971..Senior Advocate AH Naik with Advocates Rupinder Singh and Puneet Ganpathy represented SAM..[Read Judgment]