Senior Advocates cannot take away lion's share of court's time: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court recently frowned upon the practice of lawyers making arguments on the first date of listing when a matter is taken up for preliminary hearing (Hindustan Unilever Limited v Reckitt Benckiser (India) Private Limited)..The Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said that in its experience, especially in appeals related to Intellectual Property Rights, even when the Court is not inclined to interfere with the order under challenge, Senior Advocates press their arguments until the Bench agrees with them.“Similarly, when the Court is inclined to stay the operation of the impugned order or any part of it, counsel for the respondent would like to argue the matter till the cows come home. This cannot be permitted. Counsels should realise that the first date when the matter is listed, is the date for preliminary hearing, and the Court proceeds on a prima facie view of the matter. It is not a date for adjudication of the appeal on merits of the matter,” the Bench added..The Court therefore asked lawyers to keep in mind time constraints, to cooperate with the Bench and relent once they have been heard at length. It added that Senior Advocates cannot be allowed to take away the lion’s share of the Court’s time.“In our view, once we have heard the submissions at some length and perused the impugned order and other relevant documents, and appreciated the relevant law prima facie, and convey the course of actions that we propose to adopt, the counsels should relent. Unfortunately, that does not happen invariably. We implore the members of the Bar, particularly the Senior Counsels to keep the constraints of time of the court in mind and to cooperate with the Court with a greater sense of responsibility,” the order stated..In the present case, it was further noted that even though the matter was listed for preliminary hearing, the arguments had gone on for more than an hour and half, due to which several other cases could not be taken up even though the Bench sat till 5:15pm. It further added that even the order in the present case was passed in chambers since the Court did not have time..The Division Bench made these remarks while dealing with an appeal challenging a single-judge order which restrained Hindustan Unilever (manufacturer of Domex toilet cleaning products) from publishing four advertisements. The single-judge had also directed Hindustan Unilever to remove any reference to the respondents’ product, Harpic.The order of the single-judge was eventually stayed to the extent of injunction on three advertisements. However, it added that the stay on one advertisement will continue. The matter will be heard next on March 16, 2022..Senior Advocate Amit Sibal along with Advocates Ankur Sangal, Nishad Nadkarni, Pragya Mishra, Trisha Nag, Rishabh Sharma, Saksham Dhingra and Aishwary Vikram appeared for Hindustan Unilever.The respondent, Reckitt Benckiser was represented by Senior Advocate Chander Lall, along with Advocates Nancy Roy, Jawahar Lal, Ananya Chug, Prakriti Varshney and Payal Kalhan..[Read Order]