KARACHI, Sept 12: Decreeing a suit pertaining to the plaintiff’s claim for malicious prosecution in the sum of Rs365,000 Justice Khilji Arif Hussain of the Sindh High Court has held that the damages must be such as would compensate the injured as far as money is concerned.

He gave the judgment in a suit filed by plaintiff Ameeruddin against Fazalur Rahman Khan, UBL Vice President .

The plaintiff had filed the suit for malicious prosecution and damages against the defendant and prayed for awarding damages of Rs1,665,000.

Brief facts of the case are that the plaintiff is tenant of the defendant’s wife in respect of shop No 1 situated in a building constructed on plot Nos 371 and 372-C in Block 2, PECHS. The defendant’s wife filed a rent case on the ground of personal bonafide use and on other grounds. The said ejectment application was dismissed and the defendant’s wife then filed another rent case before the court of the IInd Senior Civil Judge & Rent Controller on the ground of default. It was withdrawn by the defendant’s wife who then instituted another rent case on the ground of default and personal bonafide need. It was also dismissed.

The defendant after seeing that he cannot eject the plaintiff from the said shop, began harassing and pressuring the plaintiff by submitting false and fabricated applications to different authorities and instituting false criminal cases against the plaintiff so that he and other tenants vacate the premises.

The defendant had filed more than five criminal complaints/cases against the plaintiff, one after another and all these cases were decided against the defendant.

Justice Khilji observed that from the evidence on record it was established that the defendant tried to involve the plaintiff in false cases so as to get possession of the shop from him, which the defendant failed to get through the due course of law, as rent cases filed by his wife were also dismissed. I hold that prosecution of the plaintiff was malicious and the defendant acted without any probable cause.

About the claim for loss of reputation as assessed by the plaintiff, Justice Khilji held that it would suffice to say that the same came under the head of general damages in the law of tort.

In case of general damages, the well-established principle was that the damages must be such as would compensate the injured as far as money was concerned.

It was true that the loss arising out of injury to the reputation of a person could not be compensated in terms of money and other non-pecuniary losses might not be accurately calculated in terms of coins, but for this reason alone the court did not decline to grant compensation and still the court had formulated certain parameters and devised principles for evaluation of assessment of such general damages, he observed.

Ordinarily in such cases just, fair and reasonable compensation was assessed and awarded to the victim. From the preponderance of authorities on this issue of quantification, it emerged that there was no yardstick or definite principle for assessing damages in such cases and it became difficult to assess a fair compensation. Under these circumstances, it was the discretion of the court, which might on facts of each case and considering how far society would deem it to be a fair sum, determined the amount to be awarded to a person who had suffered such a damage, Justice Khilji held.

The general damages were those which the law would imply in every violation of a legal right. They needed not be proved by strict evidence as they arose by inference of law, even though no actual pecuniary loss had been or could be shown. The vital canon followed by the judicial mind in such cases was that the conscience of the court should be satisfied that the damages awarded would, if not completely, satisfactorily compensated the aggrieved party.

The judge observed that the plaintiff’s evidence on damages had not been disputed by the defendant who failed to cross-examine the plaintiff. Keeping in view the principles for estimation of damages, facts pleaded in the case and the evidence on record, a sum of Rs365,000 appeared to be fairly compensating the loss of reputation of business and health of the plaintiff, Justice Khilji observed.