Folly of the Day
He Argued a High Court Execution Case From a Moving Car. The Bench Fined Him a Lakh and Told Him the Convenience Was Not the Point.
Counsel in execution proceedings brought by South Indian Bank and Union Bank against the National Highways Authority of India joined his Delhi High Court video hearing from inside a moving vehicle. Justice Om Prakash Shukla, whose list runs to more than seventy matters a day, imposed costs of Rs 1 lakh payable to the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee within a week, noting that the Electronic Evidence and Video Conferencing Rules, 2025 forbid an advocate to appear from a vehicle absent exceptional circumstances and the court's leave.
"The convenience offered by virtual hearings cannot come at the cost of the decorum of the Court" is the ruling; the diagnosis is older than video conferencing. A technology that removes a cost always finds a man who concludes the cost was the only thing that had been asked of him — that the robes, the silence and the standing up were decoration rather than discipline, and that a profession is a set of inconveniences one may now decline. He did not forget where he was. He decided it no longer mattered where he was, which is a different and more expensive error.
Source: LiveLaw
