SC Pulls Up Lawyer for Waiting for Senior Counsel When None Was Engaged

The Supreme Court on Tuesday lashed out at a lawyer for “purposely” keeping mum despite being called out thrice since he was waiting for a senior lawyer. But it has turned out there was no senior lawyer engaged in this case at all.

A bench headed by Justice Rohinton F Nariman, a day ago, took strong exception when the court called out the lawyer three times but there was no response from him. Upon realising it was his case being called out, the lawyer reacted in panic and apologised.

Justice Nariman, however, pulled him up for employing ‘tactics’ instead of coming up front and informing the court that he was waiting for a senior counsel.

The lawyer, yet again, apologised profusely for his lack of attention and submitted that he had no intention to waste the time of the court.

But the judge went ahead and started recording in his order how the lawyer was indulging in such tactics and tried to take advantage of the non-physical hearing.

The lawyer once again tendered his apology and requested the bench not to put this on record, but to no avail. The court recorded how it deprecated such practices.

However, it has now come to light that there was no senior counsel to appear in this case.

The appearance slip, which records the names of the lawyers to appear in a case before a bench, had also not mentioned about any senior counsel, nor did the order passed by Justice Nariman’s bench record the presence of any senior lawyer.

Besides, even before the Bombay High Court, there was no senior counsel engaged and this every lawyer had argued on his own.

Another lawyer, connected through video-conferencing in Justice Nariman’s court, also called this incident “unfortunate”. He told News18 that case number 9 was called out after 6. “This lawyer was of the impression case number 7 was called out and so he remained silent. It was only after a while the lawyers, including me, realised Item 9 was called out. I was fortunate to not be in item 9,” he said.

Technical glitches and interruptions due to various kinds of snags are not new in proceedings through video-conferencing.

From positioning of the cameras to power cuts, there have been myriad reasons for interruptions in these proceedings as judges and lawyers adapt to this new form of conducting courts.

Judges have been taking lenient views when snags disrupt proceedings and rightly so. A clement approach is the need of the hour when individuals sitting miles away try to connect while relying completely on technology and devices.