JUDGMENT Piggott and Stuart, JJ.
1. This appeal was filed by Ganga Prasad and Ram Ratan, defendants in the original suit. There were other defendants in the original suit but the decree was passed against Ganga Prasad and Ram Ratan alone. While the0 appeal was pending, Ganga Prasad died. His representatives are on the record. Later on Ram Ratan died. His representatives have not been brought on the record, and under the law they cannot be brought on now. The appeal must, therefore, be taken to have abated as far as Ram Ratan is concerned. It has been argued on behalf of the representatives of Ganga Prasad.
2. The facts may be stated very briefly. A decree was obtained by the plaintiffs respondents against Ganga Prasad, Ram Ratan and others in the court of the Additional Judge of Dholpur on the 30th of April, 1913. The decree was for a sum of money. A portion of this amount was realized by execution of the decree, and the plaintiffs instituted the suit out of which this appeal has arisen to recover the balance upon the foreign judgment of the Dholpur court. In the course of the trial Ganga Prasad and Ram Ratan set up that the Dholpur court had no jurisdiction, and they further set up that the judgment of the Dholpur court could not be operative in the courts in British India inasmuch as it proceeded on a refusal to recognize the law of British India in a case in which such law was applicable.
3. The learned Subordinate Judge repelled these and the other pleas, and decreed the suit as against Ganga Prasad and Ram Ratan, the remaining defendants being held not liable by consent of the plaintiffs.
4. The present appeal is preferred, and the only points argued before us were that the Dholpur court had no jurisdiction and that its judgment was founded on a refusal to recognize the law of British India.
5. In respect of the first point we consider it sufficient to say that inasmuch as the appellants Ganga Prasad and Ram Ratan themselves appeared and contested the claim in the Dholpur court, the plea of jurisdiction cannot be raised. We need advance no further authority for this conclusion than the decision in Emanuel v. Symon (1908) L.R. 1 K.B.D. 303. At page 309 it is laid-down that a foreign judgment must be enforced by the courts in England in every case in which the judgment-debtor had voluntarily appeared before the foreign court which passed the judgment. The law is the same in British India, It is laid down in the decisions of the High Court in Madras which have been quoted by the Subordinate Judge.
6. The second plea is as follows. If the suit upon which the foreign judgment was passed had been brought in British India, it would have been held to be time-barred under the law of limitation in operation in British India; but the law of limitation in Dholpur is not the same as the law in British India and the remedy in Dholpur was not time-barred. This is a case in which it cannot be suggested that there has been a refusal to recognize the law of British India where such law was applicable. The general rule is that a court which entertains a suit on a foreign judgment cannot institute an enquiry into the merits of the original action, or the propriety of the decision, and that rule applies here.
7. For the above reasons we dismiss the appeal of Ganga Prasad. The appeal of Ram Ratan has abated.