Commercial Courts Act Is Meant For Expediency In Deciding Commercial Disputes; Voluminous Evidence Can’t Water Down Rigours Of Statute: Supreme Court

The Apex Court was considering an appeal filed by a company involved in a long commercial dispute.

Referring to the provisions of the Commercial Courts Act, the Division Bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh held, “The schedule appended thereto deals with these specific amendments viz., disclosure and discovery of documents; summary judgments; case management hearings etc. A perusal of the provisions of this Act clearly indicates the underlying intention of expediency in deciding commercial disputes.”

“The conclusion of the above decisions has to be that, evidence, however voluminous, cannot water down the statutory intent and rigours of the statute. The force of this proposition alone is sufficient, but when it is understood in the light of the facts of this case, it becomes clearer”, it added.

AOR Preety Makkar represented the Petitioner while Advocate Ateev Kumar Mathur represented the Respondent.

Factual Background

The appellant was approached by the respondent for the purposes of developing and managing a mobile application (app). An IT Professional Services Agreement was entered into to that effect on February 19, 2013. After the Android and iOS systems were launched, the SCB (Standard Chartered Bank) instructed LMT (Levitate Mobile Technologies Pvt. Ltd) to take down the said app. This was the beginning of the dispute. Since the Agreement housed a revenue sharing clause, the latter alleged losses and set the legal process afoot by sending a legal notice, asking SCB to pay Rs. 4,46,50,000 along with interest. Such a claim was denied, leading to the filing of a Civil Suit before the Delhi High Court.

LMT filed an application seeking to place on record additional documents, which was allowed and on the same day, an order was passed renumbering the suit. The Single Judge rejected this application, applying the ‘reasonable cause’ test, holding that there was no reason whatsoever, explained in any manner, for the delay in filing this application. LMT slept over the documents and sought to produce the same, as mentioned in the application, to fill in the gaps in the evidence of PW-1. It was then concluded that allowing the application would be against the objective of the Commercial Courts Act. LMT’s prayer thus came to be denied by the High Court.

Reasoning

The Bench explained that evidence, however voluminous, cannot water down the statutory intent and rigours of the statute. It was noted that one round of additional evidence had already been produced and placed on record. All the documents that were sought to be produced by way of the application were in the possession of LMT, both at the time of filing the plaint and the subsequent additional evidence. “If the present application is allowed, what this Court would be essentially doing is condoning a piecemeal approach to the proceedings of a commercial suit the procedure for which has entirely been conceived for promoting the ease of business and recognising the need for expediency in resolving high stakes disputes”, it added.

Considering the fact that the suit in question was filed in 2015 and as of 2026, the plaintiff’s evidence was ongoing, the Bench stated, “We may say that even a snail may question the speed at which this trial is proceeding. When this reality is juxtaposed with the intent of the legislation and the malady it sought to cure within civil and specifically business litigation in India, the contrast is stark. At the cost of repetition, it be stated that all these documents were in the possession of LMT and ought to have been produced at the first instance if not later, during the time when for the first time a similar application was filed.”

Taking note of the reasons for the filing of additional documents in the first round, the Bench noted that they were substantially similar to the grounds raised in the present application. There too, what was sought to be produced were emails exchanged between the parties that were apparently discovered during the preparation for the next date of hearing.

Dealing with the argument that the strict nature of CCA cannot be applied to the present dispute, the Bench noted that the same came to be specifically answered by the impugned judgment holding that the provisions of CCA would apply even to pending cases.“The collective conclusion for both these arguments is that Order XI of the CPC, which was made applicable to commercial suits with effect from 23rd October 2015 by Act 4 of 2016, and, particularly Order Rule 1(4) thereof provides an exception to file additional documents within thirty days of the date of filing the suit, provided it was urgent, and with the leave of the Court. The same had to be filed with a declaration that all relevant documents stand produced. Therefore, even at the time of the first application, this provision was in the books and was applicable. Secondly, the statute itself provides for its application to pending matters and so considering the overall picture that emerges, we cannot help but record our agreement to the view ascribed by the learned Single Judge of the High Court”, it stated.

The Bench further stated that the suit originally initiated on May 27, 2015, was renumbered and registered as a commercial suit under the CCA on January 30, 2018, the very same date on which the appellant’s first application for placing on record the additional documents stood allowed and it was only on November 18, 2023 i.e., after a period of more than 5 years that a subsequent application taking the very same plea was filed which stood rejected on February 12, 2025, finding LMT not to have furnished any reasonable cause or justifiable explanation.

Thus concurring with the conclusion arrived at by the Court in terms of the impugned order, the Bench dismissed the appeal.

Cause Title: M/S. Levitate Mobile Technologies Pvt. Ltd v. Standard Chartered Bank & Anr. (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 674)

Appearance

Petitioner: AOR Preety Makkar

Respondent: Advocate Ateev Kumar Mathur, Amol Sharma, Sanjay Gupta, Jagriti Ahuja, AOR Manish Paliwal

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