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  How the law saved partition decrees from death, delay and technical collapse. In every partition action there is one silent danger which may enter the record at any time. It is not a defective deed. It is not a disputed boundary. It is not even a rival claimant appearing late in the day. it is something the occurrence of which even in law accepted as certain. This is the indirect admission of laws delay by the law maker. The death contemplated is not one, atleast three sometimes. It is death. A party may die while the case is pending. A plaintiff may die after filing the plaint. A defendant may die after filing a statement of claim. A person added to the action may die before the final decree. The action may continue for years. Families may change. Generations may pass. By the time the Court reaches judgment, some of the original parties may no longer be alive. On many occasions, Judges of the Court of Appeal and at times even Judges of the Supreme Court have found themselves rev...

  In the village of Samagi Gama in Bentara, there was a land known to all as Sahodara Watta. It was not remarkable in size, yet it held a quiet authority, for it once belonged to Old Jayasinghe who knew every corner of it, the well that never failed, the trees that marked the seasons, the paths worn by years of use. In his time there was no question of ownership. The land was his, and that was the end of it. When he passed away, the land did not follow him as one. It passed to many. His children and wife inherited it, and after them the next generation. The family grew, but the land did not. What had once been a single title became a bunch of shares. Still, life went on without disturbance. They lived as one family. One cultivated the fields, another cared for the garden, another maintained the house. No one asked where one man’s portion lay or another’s began. The land held them together, and they believed it always would. Yet beneath that calm lay a different truth. In law, each ...

  Identity of the corpus - A W A Salam   The Identity of the Corpus in Partition Actions At the threshold of every partition action lies a controlling requirement: the clear identification of the corpus At the threshold of every partition action lies a controlling requirement: the clear identification of the corpus. This requirement is foundational in character. It is not a matter of pleading convenience, nor is it a mere procedural formality. It conditions the very exercise of jurisdiction by the Court. Unless the land sought to be partitioned is first identified with certainty, no valid inquiry into title can meaningfully begin, no reliable allocation of shares can be made, and no decree capable of binding the world can properly be entered. A partition action differs from an ordinary civil dispute in one decisive respect. Its decree operates in rem. It does not merely bind the parties who appeared before Court. It concludes title in relation to the land itself and ...

  THE LAW OF PARTITION IN CEYLON [Contributed by W. R. BISScHOP, ESQ., LL.D.] Co-ownership. —“Nemo invicem in communione maner …” This maxim, formed in the Civil Law, laid the basis of a mode of acquisition of property. If the co-owners of property could not come to a mutual understanding as to its division, partition could be enforced by any one of them against all the others, and the adjudication of the judge was considered as forming for each person the proprietary title to such part as had been allotted to him. The judgment formed a similar proprietary title in the case of a division of an inheritance and in an action for the regulation of the boundaries of neighbouring lands. The mode of procedure was clearly set out, and by the practice of centuries the rules as to these actions, which must have been of common occurrence in a rural community, had been well established. The actions were duplices—that is to say, the parties might be called upon to act both as plaintiffs a...

  An Exposition of the concept of Per Incuriam in Sri Lankan Law   The strength of a legal system lies not merely in its capacity to decide disputes, but in its ability to correct itself without undermining its own foundations. The doctrine per incuriam represents one such carefully regulated mechanism. It is neither a device of insubordination nor a shortcut to avoid precedents, but a principled exception that permits the law to undo an error where such errors arise from ignorance of binding laws or decisions.   In its classical formulation, a decision is said to be per incuriam literally, “through lack of care”, when it has been rendered in ignorance or forgetfulness of a binding statutory provision or a binding judicial authority.   The doctrine does not apply merely because a decision is considered incorrect. It applies only where the court has failed to notice a rule of law which was directly applicable and which, had it been considered, would necessar...