Page 19 - Banking Finance August 2019

LEGAL UPDATE

LEGAL

CASES
CASES
CASES
CASES
CASES

Design theft charge Top Coal Company to stand criminal trial
against ex-staff junked South Eastern Coal Fields (SECL), the largest coal-producing company in the
country, has to stand trial for violating environmen-
The Bombay High Court has dis- tal laws as its petition has been dismissed by the
missed the petition of a medicine Chhattisgarh High Court.
packaging company alleging that its
former employees started a rival firm According to the judgment in the case, SECL vs.
and thus violated their terms of con- Chhattisgarh Environment Protection Board, the
tract, and were also guilty of 'pass- subsidiary of Coal India was granted consent un-
ing off'. der the provisions of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, which
was renewed from time to time. It was not renewed after November 2001 but
The employees had worked as assis- SECL continued to extract coal violating the Environment Protection Act.
tant manager (production) and me-
It even expanded its mining capacity from million tonnes to 15.394 million
chanical draughtsman. Later they
started another firm dealing in blis- tonnes from 2001-2002. The board submitted that the company and its chief
ter packing of medicines and cold general manager are responsible for the violation and should be punished. The
forming machine. They also stated in Chief Judicial Magistrate, Korba, took cognizance of the offence and issued pro-
the brochure of the new firm that cess. They moved the high court to quash the prosecution, raising technical
they had seven years of experience arguments.
in the original company. While rejecting all contentions, the high court cited several Supreme Court judg-
ments on the environment which had asserted that "when it affected public
The latter moved the high court al- health, courts could not afford to deal lightly with cases involving pollution of
leging that its ex-employees had air and water."
used its designs to start their ven-
ture. The high court rejected the Lone Aadhaar dissenter wins a point
plea in its judgment, IMA-PG India vs. An employee of Mumbai Port Trust who refused to link his Aadhaar card num-
Accupack. It stated that the com-
ber to his salary account has won his point after a long
pany had not proved that it had the
legal fight. A division bench of the Bombay High Court
proprietary right to the exclusive use
directed the trust to pay him 7.5% interest on 30
of any mark or get-up. months' salary which was withheld. The trust submit-
Merely because the ex-employees ted that there was no clarity on the matter until the
had worked in the company cannot issue was decided by the Supreme Court. After that,
lead to the conclusion that they had the salary was paid. The trust also pleaded that Ramesh Kuhade was the lone
passed off goods of the original firm. exception among 800 employees. The court rejected these arguments and ob-
served that even one dissenter has a right to oppose a government order.

BANKING FINANCE | AUGUST | 2019 | 19