Consider the following statements. Forum shopping involves litigants o...
Statement 3 is incorrect.
What is practice of forum shopping?
When litigants or lawyers attempt to deliberately move their case to a particular judge or Court where they think the judgment could be more favourable, they are said to be “forum shopping.”
Even the US and UK courts have criticised the practice of forum shopping as something to be avoided or prohibited.
Last year, on March 22, an SC Bench of Justice S. Abdul Nazeer and Justice Krishna Murari in the case of ‘Vijay Kumar Ghai vs. State of W.B.’ termed forum shopping as a “disreputable practise by the courts” that “has no sanction and paramountcy in law”.
On March 28, the Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh High Court in ‘Dr. Khair-Un-Nisa and Ors vs. UT of Jammu and Kashmir and Ors’ imposed costs worth one lakh rupees on the petitioners for indulging in forum shopping by filing multiple petitions before different wings of the court, albeit having the same cause of action.
Similarly, “Bench hunting” refers to petitioners managing to get their cases heard by a particular judge or court to ensure a favourable order, the court added.