Akasa Air Approached Bombay High Court Only To Save Fees, Says Pilot's Counsel

Akasa Air (SNV Aviation Pvt.) approached the Bombay High Court only to save money in terms of court fees, Senior Advocate Darius Khambata said while arguing for Captain Gareema Kumar.

He was challenging the maintainability of suits filed by Akasa against its ex-employees for violating notice period requirements under the employment contract.

If it had approached the Delhi High Court, it would have had to pay an amount that’s dependent on the claim value of the suit. However, no such rule exists in the Bombay High Court. Here, the court fees, under no circumstances, can exceed Rs 3 lakh. Akasa, an established airline, is trying to take advantage of this arbitrage, he said.

Akasa Air, last week, approached the Bombay High Court against some of the pilots who abruptly left the airline without sufficient notice to join rival airlines in breach of their employment and training agreements. For the financial loss the low-cost airline suffered, it demanded damages from its pilots in the amount of nearly Rs 21 crore. It also sought a mandatory injunction on the resignations tendered by pilots.

During the last hearing, some of the pilots against whom Akasa has proceeded questioned the maintainability of a suit filed before the Bombay High Court. According to them, since the contracts were neither executed nor performed in Mumbai, the court has no jurisdiction to decide on the dispute.

According to Indian laws, only a court under whose jurisdiction a contract was executed or a court under whose jurisdiction at least some part of the cause of action has arisen can decide upon the dispute. A cause of action refers to a set of material facts that give rise to a right enforceable before court.

According to Akasa, the Mumbai court fulfils all these requirements. To that end, the contract was executed in Mumbai even though the pilot is a resident of Delhi. Further, the parties mutually agreed to refer all disputes arising from the dispute solely to the Mumbai courts. This is in addition to the fact that a part of the cause of action also arose in Mumbai.

Since a payment of Rs 18 lakh for breach of contract was payable in Mumbai through a post-dated cheque, a part of the contract is also performed in Mumbai, giving the Bombay High Court the jurisdiction to proceed with the case, it argued.

However, according to Kumar, these arguments are presumptive at best. The employment agreement was executed in Delhi and was later sent to Mumbai through courier, she said. She was domiciled in Delhi and operated out of Bengaluru. Therefore, the contract was neither executed in Mumbai nor performed in Mumbai. Moreover, there is no presumption that the cheque that is payable on breach of contract is only payable in Mumbai. The cheque was drawn at a Delhi bank and can be cashed anywhere, not necessarily Mumbai. With neither execution nor performance proved in Mumbai, no suit can lie before this court, she further argued.

The court will now hear the matter on Sept. 25.