Supreme Court in Prem Kishore v. Brahm Prakash 2023 SCC OnLine SC 356 analysed cases dealing with rejection of plaint on grounds of res judicata and culled out the principles that a Court is required to keep in mind before deciding an application under Order VII Rule 11(d) which talks about rejection of a plaint being barred by the law. The relevant
portion is reproduced herewith:
“..37. On a perusal of the above authorities, the guiding principles for deciding an application under Order 7 Rule
11(d) of the CPC can be summarized as follows:—
(i) To reject a plaint on the ground that the suit is barred by any law, only the averments in the plaint will have to be referred to;
(ii) The defense made by the defendant in the suit must not be considered while deciding the merits of the application;
(iii) To determine whether a suit is barred by res judicata, it is necessary that (i) the previous suit‘ is decided, (ii) the issues in the subsequent suit were directly and substantially in issue in the former suit; (iii) the former suit was between the same parties or parties through whom they claim, litigating under the same title; and (iv) that these issues were adjudicated and finally decided by a court competent to try the subsequent suit;
(iv) Since an adjudication of the plea of res judicata requires consideration of the pleadings, issues and decision in the previous suit‘, such a plea will be beyond the scope of Order 7 Rule 11 (d), where only the statements in the plaint will have to be perused…”