Supreme Court: Fresh suit for specific performance barred under Order II Rule 2 where the first suit sought only an injunction
The question: Is a second suit for specific performance barred by Order II Rule 2 CPC when the first suit sought only an injunction and was withdrawn with a request for liberty to file afresh?
The Supreme Court on 29 September 2026 set aside concurrent decrees for specific performance of an alleged oral agreement to sell land and dismissed the suit on two independent grounds. A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran (judgment by Justice Vinod Chandran) held that the second suit was barred by Order II Rule 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, because the plaintiff had earlier sued only for an injunction on the same oral contract, when the right to seek specific performance had already arisen, and had not obtained leave. It also held, for completeness, that the plaintiff had failed to prove a concluded oral contract. The plaintiffs, J P Iscon Private Ltd. and another, said they had struck an oral bargain with the first defendant company and others to buy a property. The price was said to have been fixed at Rs 18.51 crore, with a token advance, and then raised to Rs 20.50 crore at the defendants' insistence, with Rs 5,11,000 paid in cash and a cheque of Rs 5 crore handed over in January 2007. They first filed a suit at Mirzapur seeking only a permanent injunction against alienation of the property, and withdrew it on the footing of settlement talks, after which they filed the present suit for specific performance in 2007. The pleadings were amended in 2011. The Trial Court and the High Court decreed the suit, and the defendants, Bombay Garage Ahmedabad Limited and others, appealed.