Cause of action and jurisdiction and its kind

You order a phone on an app from your home in Nerul. The seller is in Bengaluru, the payment goes through a gateway based in Gurugram, and the phone that arrives is a cheap dummy. You are furious, and you want to sue. But which court? Does it matter that you live in Navi Mumbai and the seller does not? And how much money does your claim have to be worth before a particular court can hear it? The answers depend on two ideas that run through the whole Code: the cause of action, which tells you why you can sue, and jurisdiction, which tells you where and before whom.

In two minutes

Cause of action is the bundle of facts that gives the plaintiff a right to sue, and jurisdiction is the court's power to hear the suit, which may be over the subject-matter, the value of the claim, or the place, and may be original or appellate.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Civil Procedure Code 1908 and Limitation Act 1963 on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.