Sri Lanka Court of Appeal: This appeal was filed before a 2-Judge Bench comprising of A.H.M.D. Nawaz and E.A.G.R. Amarasekara, JJ.
Facts of the case were such that District Judge dismissed the plaintiff’s action on the premise that the plaintiff’s action was barred by the law of res judicata. Plaintiff had instituted this action seeking a declaration of title to the land and ejectment of defendant therefrom. Defendant contended that plaintiff had filed two actions on the same cause of action which were dismissed and thus the action before the district court was res judicata. It was submitted that the relationship between the plaintiff and defendant of licensor and licensee had already been terminated in the previous action and accordingly was decided against plaintiff against which he did not prefer an appeal thus, he could not file this action to terminate the relationship again.
Court of Appeal was of the view that one of the actions filed by plaintiff was wrongly decided but since there was no appeal filed against it, the purported cause of action in the present case becomes res judicata. The Court also noted that it cannot suo motu act in a revision to change the judgment wrongly decided since it dated back to 1997. Therefore, this appeal was dismissed. [Jalin Pedi Durayalage Manuel v. R.W. Pina, C.A. 425 of 2000 (F), decided on 14-12-2018]
