In Indian law are courts required to give similar verdicts for similar cases? From what I understand this power is discretionary to courts other than supreme courts. But there isn't much material on it. Is there any grey area that I might be missing ? And are the decisions of supreme court binding on high courts of states ?
The difficult part is deciding when two cases are similar. Precedents from higher courts govern what the law is in a case. But, a lot of what trial court judges do is to boil down a mountain of evidence to determine authoritatively what facts actually transpired before applying the law to those facts. This involves immense amounts of discretion and judgment. Also, while in some cases the law provides very clear guidance to a judge about what to do, in other cases, the law is vague enough that two different judges can reach two different verdicts, both of which are legally correct, on the same set of facts. For example, in a divorce case (involving made up facts and law to illustrate the idea), suppose that the two main assets of the family are a house and retirement account of equal value and that the facts as applied to the relevant law say that the value of the assets must be divided equally between the husband and wife. One judge could award the house to the husband and the retirement account to the wife, while another judge could award the retirement account to the husband and the house to the wife. But both judges would have complied perfectly with the law. Similarly, in a divorce there are a variety of different custody plans for children that could all conform to the law and different judges could choose different plans and each be correct. As another example, suppose that a bulldozer destroys a house and the person whose house is destroyed sues for money damages. The judge is presented with two different appraisals from equally qualified appraisers for the value of the house, both of whom superficially at least, are using proper appraisal methods. But one appraiser says the house was worth 1,000,000 and another says that the house was worth 1,500,000. Realistically, any verdict the judge renders between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 could be upheld as legally correct. Because the process of turning evidence into legal verdicts involves so much discretion and so many judgment calls, and because it is rare that two cases are factually identical, the goal of giving similar verdicts for similar cases, is difficult to achieve and difficult even to evaluate in real life. It is almost certain that similar cases often result in dissimilar verdicts, and not infrequently the reasons for this (like using personal ideologies as opposed to what the law demands to resolve close cases) are not good ones. But deciding how common that is, or in what kinds of cases it is most troubling that this happens, is very hard to determine.
Contemporary decisions of domestic British courts (e.g. the Supreme Court) are not binding in foreign jurisdictions. They may be persuasive for courts there, because there is a common legal tradition and the U.K. judiciary is often considered to be quite good. Some countries have preserved a right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (aka &quot;The Queen in Council&quot;). This body is basically the same judges as the Supreme Court but sitting in a different room. As the JCPC their decisions are precedential in wherever the appeal came from, and potentially elsewhere if the law in question is the same. Corollary: JCPC decisions are not precedential for British courts, unless the JCPC goes out of its way to say so. In these cases, the JCPC applies the law and constitution of the origin country, which can include retained pre-independence British laws as well as the common law. That country could pass a subsequent statute or constitutional act overriding the JCPC's decision (as Parliament could in the U.K.), so that country retains ultimate control even though one of &quot;its&quot; courts is a shared one sitting in London. This arrangement can cause dissonance. For example, some Caribbean countries would like to execute people, but that is prohibited in the U.K.; the JCPC continues to permit executions to go ahead in some cases, even though that would be illegal if the same judges were in a different room hearing a British case. There are very occasional cases from Brunei, whose law is determined by the Sultan and includes aspects of Islamic law not known in the U.K. legal tradition.
What are the legal consequences of substantive factual errors in an opinion? None. I assume that this specific ruling is not affected in any way by the text of the opinion? Correct. I assume that even an opinion of the form &quot;We got high and decided to rule wrongly for fun&quot; wouldn't actually negate the ruling? Probably not, but it might precipitate a constitutional crisis or lead to an impeachment. How does this affect the precedent? It doesn't. Will courts in the future consider the true facts of the case (whatever they perceive them to be), No. will they accept as legal fiction that the facts were as the Court describes them? Yes. Could it be legal for the district to repeat exactly the same set of actions in exactly the same set of true circumstances as before, since those won't be the same circumstances that the Court claimed to rule on? In such a case, is the lower court bound by the Supreme Court's characterization of the facts of the case, Generally speaking the lower courts are bound by characterizations of the facts made by the appellate court. But, it depends to some extent on the procedural posture of the case. In most cases, the findings of fact made by the trial court following an evidentiary hearing are binding on appellate courts in the U.S. unless they are not supported by any admissible evidence presented at trial, but there are some exceptions to this rule and there is considerable art as well as science that goes into properly characterizing the evidence presented at trial. But, for example, many appellate cases are appeals from a dismissal of a case on a motion to dismiss at the outset of a case, in which all allegations of the Plaintiff's complaint in a civil matter are taken as true for sake of argument, and the legal issue presented is whether the Plaintiff can prevail if all of those facts are true. In a case in that procedural posture, assuming that the appellate court reversed the trial court and found that the facts alleged state a claim upon which relief can be granted, then the remand would be to move forward with discovery and other pre-trial procedures in the case and ultimately a trial, if necessary, to determine the actual facts of the case as opposed to the facts as alleged by the Plaintiff in the complaint or petition. Not infrequently, when appellate courts are divided over what happened in the trial court, one side of the debate, looking at the raw testimony and exhibits presented at trial, will conclude that the admissible evidence presented at trial did not support the findings of fact in a mixed question of fact and law made by a trial court judge, while another side of the debate will accept the trial court judge's findings of fact uncritically. It often isn't easy to know, from reading an appellate court opinion alone, which side is which in this regard. can it use the true facts of the case as long as it obeys the ruling itself? Usually not. Usually, facts relied upon by an appellate court are by definition the correct facts (apart from clerical errors - e.g., an appellate court once misspelled my name in a court opinion, and the lower court wasn't bound by that mistake). This said, as noted above, the precise procedural posture of the case, nature of the court's opinion, and scope of the remand order is highly relevant to what a court can do on remand.
Does this create precedent? NO This was a Crown Court case, only the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal can set precedent which it did with similar circumstances in R v Hill 1989
When a judge decides a case there will be An order - e.g. &quot;Smith shall pay Jones £100,000&quot; Reasons for the decision - i.e. a description of the evidence, and the judge's findings of fact and legal reasoning. Sometimes a party, even though they have completely won, is nevertheless aggrieved by some things the judge has said in the Reasons (or in the way the judge has handled the trial - e.g. the judge's interventions). For example the judge may have said that the winning party was not a credible witness but they nevertheless won because of the evidence of other witnesses who were found to be credible. The rule in England and Wales is that you can only appeal orders. So if the order is completely in your favour you cannot appeal just because you don't like the reasons.
In the US this is generally governed by state law: RCW 4.24.350 in Washington state. The criminal jury is not empowered to make such a decision, but a separate civil trial for malicious prosecution would be possible. Plaintif (ex defedant) would have to prove that the action was instituted with knowledge that the same was false, and unfounded, malicious and without probable cause in the filing of such action, or that the same was filed as a part of a conspiracy to misuse judicial process by filing an action known to be false and unfounded The basis for the lawsuit would be the objective facts that prove that the prosecution was false and malicious, and not the fact of acquittal or the subjective opinion of a juror.
Chaudhry v Prabhakar is unlikely to be applicable Giving specific advice one-on-one in a field of known expertise when specifically asked creates a duty of care. Giving general advice on a mass-communication forum to general questions when all parties are aware that specific legal advice is specifically off-topic doesn’t.
This is largely congruent with* the doctrine of laches. The basic idea, under common law, is that you can lose rights by failing to assert them. This is generally important for many reasons, but specifically in the case of appeals: The argument should have been brought before the trial court. Justice is not a game, but it's important to recognize that the party trying to raise the argument had an opportunity to do so already. They have given up their right to raise this argument, and extending them the privilege of doing so is (for the following reasons) not good for the system. Courts of appeals are typically not well-equipped to evaluate factual evidence. It is not their area of expertise. Witnesses or evidence may be less available. It's just not practical to try to adjudicate factual issues on appeal, most of the time. If anyone could get an appeal by bringing new factual arguments, then everyone would do that. You'd bring your strongest argument before the district court, and then if that fails, bring the second strongest before the circuit court. That way, you get an extra trial. This is inefficient. Allowing factual arguments on appeal would encourage attorneys and their clients to strategically bring different facts before different courts. This kind of forum-shopping is harmful because it has little to do with who has the stronger overall case, and more to do with who has the better lawyer. * "Congruent with" is not the same as "an instance of"; this rule is not formally an application of laches. It just happens to share the same justification.