The Hon\u2019ble Karnataka High Court had to deal with a question of professional ethics in this case.\u00a0 One of the parties before the trial court was an Advocate.\u00a0 He conducted the proceedings in person without discharging the Advocate on record. The Hon\u2019ble Court referred to the following passage from the \u201cBarrister at Law\u201d by Mr. James Robert Merchant \u2018Counsel cannot share the conduct of a case with his client; if counsel is instructed, he ought to be at the head of the case and conduct it throughout.\u00a0 It is not becoming for counsel to submit to any limitation of the ordinary authority of counsel in this respect or to take a subordinate position in the conduct of a case.\u00a0 If a litigant conducts his case in person and examines and cross examines witness, counsel will not be allowed to suggest questions and argue points of law.<\/u>\u00a0 It is further observed that \u2018the same rule applies if the litigant is himself a barrister; a barrister who is litigant cannot appear both as counsel and as litigant; he must elect either to conduct the case entirely as litigant in person or to abandon the case entirely to his counsel; he cannot be head to address the Court either after or before his counsel\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sir William Boulton on \u2018Conduct and Etiquette at the Bar\u2019 observes \u201cwhilst a member of the Bar is entitled, like any other member of the public, to appear in person, it is improper for him whether instructed professionally or not, to appear also as counsel in a case in which he himself is a party i.e. to wear robes or to sit in counsel\u2019s seats\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thus the Hon\u2019ble Court held that the vexed question is whether legal and professional ethics and conduct and etiquette at the Bar would permit the party to appear in person and conduct the proceedings without discharging the counsel.\u00a0 The answer will have to be \u2018No\u2019 as he cannot appear without discharging the counsel on record.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Advocates act , 1961
\nS,7 :Professional ethics party cannot conduct case himself without discharging his counsel on record. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allied-laws"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-32O","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11707,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11706\/revisions\/11707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}