The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed e-commerce giant Amazon for what it perceived as an abuse of legal process to extend its ongoing litigation with the Future Retail Group over the latter’s Rs 24,731 crore merger deal with Reliance Retail.
The apex court said it would not entertain such “luxurious litigation” in the future.
The court’s sharp rap came when senior advocate Nakul Dewan on Tuesday sought permission to file a seven-page written submission on behalf of Amazon in the matter.
Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana took exception to the request and said: “What is this? I think it is better to not list these matters at all. It is luxurious litigation…We do not agree with this practice.”
He was part of a bench comprising Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice Hima Kohli.
The remark that it is a “luxurious litigation” assumes significance as both Amazon and FRL group had been engaged in a bitter legal battle over Future group’s plan to sell its retail assets to the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Retail in accordance with a deal struck in August 2020.
As on January 1, this year the Supreme Court itself is facing a massive backlog of 70,239 cases, while the total pendency of cases in the country is put at around 4 crore.
The CJI pointed out that the request by the Amazon counsel seems to be part of dilatory tactics to delay the litigation. He felt that the company could have made the request on February 3 when the court had reserved its verdict after a consortium of 27 lenders, which has been trying to recover its dues from Biyani’s beleaguered company, proposed a bidding war between Amazon and the Reliance group to break the impasse.
“You (Amazon) want to complicate the matters? If you want to drag on the matter, then continue these hearings. We reserved the order, it’s getting ready. But now you want to file written arguments. If I allow you (Amazon), then I have to allow them (FRL)… give them time to file reply,” the CJI observed.
When the senior counsel pleaded that he only wanted to summarise the earlier submissions made during the hearing, Justice Ramana retorted: “You think, we don’t have ability to understand oral submissions? If that’s your understanding, then file it.”
However, senior advocate K.V.Vishwanathan appearing for FRL opposed Amazon’s plea. Asserting that Amazon was only seeking to delay the litigation the senior counsel pointed out that according to convention the former should have filed its written submission either during the hearing or within two days after the order was reserved.
Later the bench declined to entertain Amazon’s plea for filing the written submissions.
HC hearing
The Delhi High Court on Tuesday said it would hear on February 11 a batch of pleas concerning the ongoing legal tussle between Amazon and the Future Group.
Justice Hari Shankar recorded that several petitions have been placed before him pursuant to an order passed by the Supreme Court and asked the parties to file a short note detailing the controversy at hand, the connection between the petitions, and setting out the priority on each matter that is to be heard.
