The Delhi High Court has asserted that while the advocate’s conduct in retaining the client’s money would be unfair, the agreed fee remained recoverable/adjustable from the compensation amount recovered in litigation, if non-payment was established from the evidence. The Court held that it was not a case of whether the bill got proved or not, but that the oral evidence sufficiently established that the plaintiff had failed to pay the professional fee as settled between the parties. Since the plaintiff neither pleaded nor proved payment of the agreed fee, and the evidence showed that the fee was liable to be adjusted from the compensation amount received, the ADJ had rightly appreciated the evidence and decreed the counterclaim.
A Single Judge Bench of Justice Neena Bansal Krishna noted that it was undisputed that C.S. Rathore had appeared as advocate for the plaintiff and that the agreed fee was Rs. 25,000 for the writ petition and Rs. 11,000 for the contempt petition. The Bench also noted that the amount of Rs. 60,000 in cash received by the respondent on April 25, 2011 on behalf of the plaintiff had not been handed over and had been retained by him, and that such retention had already been held against him in the suit decreed by the Civil Judge, which had not been challenged by him.
The Bench observed that the respondent generated a fee bill dated April 27, 2011, i.e., two days after receiving the money, and that he should have fairly returned the amount and then sought Rs. 36,000 as fee, or adjusted his fee and returned the balance amount. At the same time, the Bench found from the evidence that the plaintiff was liable to pay the fee and had led no evidence to show that the professional fee was ever paid; the plaintiff had nowhere in his pleadings or evidence stated even an iota about the fee agreed or how and on what date he had paid it. The Bench therefore held that the ADJ had rightly appreciated the evidence and rival assertions in concluding that the agreed professional fee of Rs. 36,000 was never paid by the plaintiff to the defendant.
Briefly, the appeal has been filed against the common judgment and decree passed by the ADJ, whereby the counterclaim filed by C.S. Rathore seeking recovery of Rs. 36,000 as professional fee, which had been dismissed by the Civil Judge on October 10, 2018, was decreed. The plaintiff had filed a suit for recovery of Rs. 60,000 along with interest, on the case that in the contempt proceedings arising out of his employment dispute, the employer paid Rs. 80,000 through his counsel, out of which Rs. 20,000 was sent to him by post, but Rs. 60,000 received in cash by the defendant/advocate was not handed over.
The defendant denied liability and asserted by counterclaim that the plaintiff had not paid agreed professional fee of Rs. 36,000, comprising Rs. 25,000 for the writ petition and Rs. 11,000 for the contempt petition. The Trial Court decreed the suit for Rs. 60,000 with interest and dismissed the counterclaim. On appeal, the District Judge upheld the decree for Rs. 60,000 but also held that the professional fee of Rs. 36,000 had not been paid, and directed adjustment of that amount from the plaintiff’s decree, leaving Rs. 24,000 payable to the plaintiff.
