Sir Richard Harington, J.

1. This is a Rule to set aside a judgment given against theEast Indian Railway Company on the ground, amongst others, that no claim wasserved on the Company under the provisions of section 77 of the Indian RailwaysAct. That section provides that a claim such as the present claim which is madein respect of goods which are delivered in a damaged condition shall not beenforced unless it is made in writing to the Railway administration within sixmonths from the date of the delivery of the goods. Now, section 140 provideshow that claim is to be served and enacts that any document required orauthorised by this Act to be served on Railway administration may be served, inthe case of a Railway administered by the Government, on the Manager and, inthe case of a Railway administered by a Railway Company, on the Agent in Indiaof the Railway Company and, then it goes on, in the sub-clauses, to describehow that claim is to be served, which it is unnecessary to deal with in thiscase. The complaint made by the Railway Company in the present case is that thejudgment of the lower Court cannot stand because the sections of the RailwaysAct to which I have referred have not been complied with. The claim in questionwas served within six months but it was served on the Divisional TrafficManager and the learned Vakil for the opposite party argues that that is asufficient compliance with the provisions of the Act. It is quite clear to methat it is not so. There is a direct authority contrary to the view taken bythe learned Vakil which is to be found in the case of Nadiar Chand Skaha v.Wood 35 C. 194 : : 12 C.W.N. 450 and that case laid down thatthe notice must be served as provided by section 140 and that the service onthe Traffic Manager in the case of a Railway administered by the RailwayCompany instead of on the Agent is not a service within the Act. It isperfectly clear to my mind that that decision is a perfectly correct one. Onthe other hand, reliance has been placed by the learned Vakil in the case ofWoods, Agent of the Assam Bengal Railway Company v. Mehar Ali Bepari: 3 Ind. Cas. 479 [LQ/CalHC/1908/67] : 13 C.W.N. 24 : 4 M.L.T. 427. If that casepurported to lay down as a matter of law that a service on the Traffic Managerwas a sufficient compliance with the Act and was a good service as on the AgentI shall not be prepared to agree with it. But the decision appears to have goneon the finding come to on the particular facts of that case that the Agent hadauthorised the Traffic Manager to receive the notice: at least, that is thefact, as I follow the judgment. The result is that, in my opinion, this Ruleought to be made absolute on the very short ground that the plaintiff in theaction did not comply with the condition precedent to his suit which is foundin section 77 of the Railways Act by not serving the claim as provided bysection 140 of that Act. On this ground, the Rule is made absolute with costs,the hearing fee being assessed at one gold mohur.

Herbert Carnduff, J.

2. I agree.

.

The East Indian Railway Co.vs. Babu Madhu Lal (10.03.1913 -CALHC)