The Commercial Courts Act, 2015 rewrote discovery for commercial suits precisely to end trial by instalment: all documents in a party's power, possession, control or custody must enter with the pleadings, and the gate for latecomers is deliberately narrow. In M/s Karim Hotels Pvt. Ltd. v. Mohammad Talha, CM(M)-IPD 5/2026, decided on 29 October 2026, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav applied that discipline under Article 227, setting aside a Commercial Court order that had permitted a defendant in a trademark suit to file twenty-five old business records — licences, tax papers, invoices — on the strength of their having been "found during renovation." The judgment is a clean statement of the two-step inquiry, and of the limited but real supervisory jurisdiction over interlocutory orders of Commercial Courts.
The backdrop
The petitioner, claiming the KARIM and KARIM\'S marks with use traced to 1913, sued over a Moradabad restaurant run as GULSHAN-E-KARIM. The suit was filed in August 2022 and the written statement that October. An interim injunction followed in January 2025, affirmed with a disclaimer arrangement by a Division Bench later that year. Then, after the plaintiff had closed its evidence, the defendant sought leave to file twenty-five documents dated 1998 to 2017 — his own licences, tax records, bank statements and invoices — saying he had found them during renovation work. The Commercial Court allowed the application on payment of ₹20,000 costs. The High Court reversed.
The sequence the statute demands
Why the discipline matters
The 2015 Act\'s declaration-and-disclosure regime — the statement of truth, the obligation to disclose documents helpful and harmful alike, the bar on relying on undisclosed documents without leave — is the backbone of the commercial trial timetable. If a shifting explanation and a costs order could reopen the record years later, every deadline in the schedule becomes advisory. The judgment also illustrates the narrow but genuine role of Article 227 after the Act: appeals and revisions against interlocutory orders are barred, yet a Commercial Court that substitutes its own test for the statutory one commits an error the High Court can and will correct — a principle drawn from the settled supervisory jurisprudence the court applied.
Checklist for commercial litigants
- Front-load the record: audit every file, ledger, mailbox and storage site before pleadings are signed; the statement of truth covers the search, not merely the selection.
- If documents surface late, explain precisely: one consistent, dated, verifiable account of where they were, why they were inaccessible, and when they emerged. Shifting narratives were fatal here.
- Oppose with the statute, not adjectives: the winning objection is that the applicant has not pleaded custody and cause in the statutory sequence — not that the documents are inconvenient.
- Calibrate the challenge: a wrongful grant of leave is worth an Article 227 petition only where the error is jurisdictional; routine disagreements will not clear the supervisory threshold.
Practice note: The decision leaves the merits — including the defendant\'s claimed adoption of the name since 1997 — entirely open. What it closes is the route by which a party sits on its own records and deploys them after the other side\'s evidence is in. In commercial litigation, the file you build before filing is, very often, the trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
What must a party show to file documents after the pleadings in a commercial suit?
Under Order XI Rule 1(10) CPC as applied to commercial disputes, the court asks first whether the documents were in the party's power, possession, control or custody when the pleading was filed; if they were, leave requires proof of reasonable cause — a cause outside the party's control — for non-disclosure. Mere relevance of the documents is never enough.
Why did the "found during renovation" explanation fail?
The documents were the defendant's own business records, kept at his own premises — squarely within his custody when the written statement was filed. The explanation also shifted over time (termite damage, a family wedding, inexperience), and none of the versions described a cause outside his control.
Can costs cure a wrongful grant of leave?
No. The High Court held that imposing ₹20,000 costs could not legitimise documents the statute did not permit; the trial would otherwise proceed on an unlawfully expanded record.
Is Article 227 available against Commercial Court interlocutory orders?
Yes, but sparingly. The Commercial Courts Act bars appeals and revisions against most interlocutory orders, and supervisory jurisdiction does not become a substitute appeal. Interference is reserved for jurisdictional errors going to the root — here, applying a relevance test where the statute prescribes a reasonable-cause test.