Case 1: Resignation once accepted cannot be withdrawn
In a recent verdict the Jabalpur Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court has held that a police constable whose resignation was accepted by his employer cannot thereafter — after a second thought or otherwise — withdraw his resignation.
This is as it should be because often thin-skinned and sensitive employees tender their resignation in a huff only to regret later maybe on the advice of their parents or well-wishers or even on a dispassionate introspection.
Employers themselves try to prevail upon such employees to reconsider their decisions taken on the heat of the moment especially when such employees are perceived to be efficient but are often only too happy to lap up such resignations by errant, rebellious or recalcitrant employees.
Either way, great care must be exercised before putting in one’s papers as resignation in a huff without an offer from another employer can leave a person without livelihood for a prolonged spell besides attaching stigma to him/her as they are perceived to be hasty, indecisive and more sensitive than warranted.
Case 2: No public charges against private citizens unless national security is involved
The Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has recently urged media not to make public charges against private citizens unless such publication serve public interest. This is an unstated and implicit condemnation of the media proclivity especially the television to lap up salacious details of private citizens attracting negative publicity just to be one-up as well as to come up with a breaking news story.
The citizen thus done in is the loser as practically the publication of his peccadillos or major crimes amount to media trial. People love gossip especially if it has a salacious tinge to it which is why social media is full of them giving a leg-up to “forwards’.
Social media has somewhat been tamed with courts frowning upon forwards and attaching the same consequences on those forwarding that entail on the originator of the message. But the press enjoys greater freedom and therefore the High Court advise is timely though one wonders if it would slow it down.
Case 3: Restrictive billing policy comes squarely within the ambit of Competition Commission
The Madras High Court on January 19 reiterated its earlier decision that Google’s billing policy must be adjudicated by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and those hurt cannot rush to High Courts for a quick-fix by way of stay.
Cell phones are full of apps both free and paid for the consumers but the service provider has to cough up fees to Android platform for hosting the apps. The likes of Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi.com, Unacademy as well as several others who have been done in by Google’s in-app billing policy are facing ouster from Android playstore.
This is because they have questioned insistence on billing only by a billing app developed or approved by Google barring third-party billers. Parenthetically, it maybe of interest to readers to known that Apple forks out huge sums every year to Google to feature its search engine in its cell phones.
Case 4: Time of death in the post mortem report necessarily has got to be approximate
The Orissa High Court recently held that time of death is not determinable with mathematical precision by the pathologists and their determination in this regard must be accepted by the prosecution even if it has the effect of acquitting a person of murder as it happened in the instant case.
The time of death mentioned in the post mortem report is range bound depending upon parameters known to the state-of-the art like food remaining in the intestine etc. While medical science is capable of being more precise and reducing the scope for approximation, as it is, the prosecution cannot question the time of death as recorded by the forensic pathologists.
—The author, S Murlidharan, is a Chartered Accountant and legal analyst. He shares his comments on important court rulings and judgements in this column. The views expressed are personal.
Read the previous Legal Digest columns here
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
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