November 12, 2026

No High Court Is a Better Court: Why the Supreme Court Was Right to Stop Forum Shopping

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2026-11-12 13:13:57

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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The Supreme Court was right to move a commercial suit from the Delhi High Court to the Madras High Court. A litigant cannot pick a court merely because the law allows more than one choice. In its order of October 28, a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan has said what the commercial Bar should have heard long ago. Jurisdiction is a legal entitlement, and it is not a shopping list.

The facts are plain. The plaintiffs, Sri Lakshmi Srinivasa Agro Foods, operate mainly from Nelamangala in Bengaluru Rural. The defendants, Sai Maghalakshmi Traders, are based in Chennai. The suit, CS(COMM) 625/2026, was nonetheless filed in Delhi. The bench said it failed to understand why, since both parties live in neighbouring states and the Madras High Court has original jurisdiction. It held that territorial jurisdiction in several courts cannot, by itself, justify forum shopping or perpetuate a hierarchy among High Courts. It also called the belief that one High Court is better suited to a category of disputes "entirely misguided and erroneous".

Why the Court is correct

First, the law grants a right to sue. It does not grant a right to choose the most favourable bench. Section 20 of the Code of Civil Procedure lets a suit be filed where the defendant resides or where the cause of action arises. The extra forums in Section 134(2) of the Trade Marks Act and Section 62(2) of the Copyright Act exist so that a small rights-holder need not chase an infringer across the country. They were never meant to let a Bengaluru company haul a Chennai trader to the national capital.

Second, High Courts are equal constitutional courts. There is no ladder among them. When turf clubs asked the Supreme Court in February to consolidate GST challenges in one High Court, Chief Justice Surya Kant warned that it could invite malpractices. Justice Joymalya Bagchi added that all High Courts are equal. A litigant who flies to Delhi because he thinks its judges are wiser insults the Madras, Karnataka and Calcutta benches alike.

Third, forum shopping is a weapon against the defendant. A respondent in Chennai must hire counsel in Delhi, bear travel and fees, and meet an interim injunction obtained far from home. The Supreme Court allowed the respondents here to appear through video conferencing, but a remedy of convenience does not cure a choice of forum made in bad faith. The Court was careful to say that the transfer was not ordered for convenience alone. It was ordered to discourage the practice itself.

Recent cases that show the pattern

Atomberg v Eureka Forbes (Supreme Court, November 2025). Both companies have registered offices in Mumbai. Atomberg sued for groundless threats in the Bombay High Court on July 1, 2025. Eureka Forbes filed an infringement suit in Delhi on July 7. Atomberg alleged that Delhi jurisdiction was manufactured through a single online purchase. The Supreme Court transferred the Delhi suit to Bombay to avoid duplicate proceedings, and noted that both parties were based in Mumbai.

Seventeen plaints returned (Delhi High Court, November 3, 2026). Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav returned plaints in 17 commercial IP suits involving Marico, Zydus Wellness, JSW MG Motor and Beiersdorf. In more than half the cases neither party was based in Delhi. The plaintiffs relied on online availability, deliveries to Delhi addresses and purchases made through investigators. The court refused to let jurisdiction be created by such transactions. It described the Delhi High Court as a banyan tree that gives shelter but can stunt the growth of other trees. The issue, it said, was institutional discipline and not loss of territory.

The NSE share sale PIL (Delhi High Court, August 2026). Parinay Sharma moved the Bombay High Court on May 2 against SEBI on substantially similar issues. On August 5 he filed a public interest litigation in Delhi against IFCI's sale of its NSE shares and did not disclose the Bombay case. The Delhi High Court dismissed the petition on August 19 for suppression and forum shopping, with costs of Rs 5 lakh.

Michael Builders v National Medical Commission (Delhi High Court, 2024). The petitioner withdrew its petitions from the Madras High Court and refiled similar ones in Delhi. Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma held that this was an abuse of process. She also held that the commission's head office in Delhi did not confer jurisdiction on its own.

Writ petitions sent home (Delhi High Court, 2026). In March the court dismissed a petition in Tribhuvan Gaur because the essential part of the cause of action lay outside Delhi. In July it dismissed Chintan Agrawal's petition because the authorities concerned were in Uttar Pradesh. Both petitioners were given liberty to approach the proper High Court.

The pattern is consistent. Delhi attracts litigants from Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and elsewhere because of its reputation, its specialised IP Division and the presence of central offices. Reputation is not jurisdiction, and a head office is not a cause of action.

The hardest case: personality rights

The most visible test of this principle is the stream of personality-rights suits by film stars. Actors based in Mumbai, Hyderabad and elsewhere have gone to the Delhi High Court to stop deepfakes, voice cloning and unauthorised merchandise. Recent applicants include Sonakshi Sinha in March 2026, Allu Arjun in April and Khushi Kapoor in August, following earlier orders for Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Commentators call the choice of Delhi calculated, and point to its specialised IP Division and its readiness to grant wide injunctions.

This is not a clean case of forum shopping, and it should not be called one. No court has said so. The defendants are often anonymous websites and platforms with no home forum, the harm spreads across India within minutes, and the urgency is real. The Bombay High Court is equally available. It issued India's first AI voice-cloning injunction for Arijit Singh in 2024, and a Kartik Aaryan suit was filed there in April 2026.

The principle still applies. The Delhi High Court's own ruling of November 3 holds that online accessibility cannot by itself create jurisdiction. A star who lives and works in Mumbai should show a real link to Delhi, such as a market, a defendant or a business there. The reputation of the forum is not such a link. Where the plaintiff's home court is competent, the plaintiff should be ready to explain why Delhi is the better place.

The caveat the Court itself has drawn

The principle must not be stretched. In Baksish Ahmad v Union of India, decided on June 9, 2026, the Supreme Court held that a High Court cannot decline a writ petition under Article 226(1) merely because another High Court is more convenient, where the necessary authority sits within its territory. A citizen's constitutional remedy against the State should not be lost to administrative convenience. That case concerned a real territorial link, which the Delhi suit between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu parties lacked.

Critics of the Delhi High Court's 17-plaint ruling also have a point worth hearing. Advocate Nancy Roy has argued that Section 20(c) allows suit where the cause of action arises in part, and that a test of the "essential" part adds discretion the CPC does not contain. Parliament should clarify the law so that the line is statutory and not judge-made.

The way forward

The rule that emerges is simple. A plaintiff may sue where a real and substantial part of the dispute arose, or where the defendant lives or works. A plaintiff may not create a link by a trap purchase, a website visit or a head office, and then call it jurisdiction. The Supreme Court has now said so, and the Delhi High Court has said so in its own house. Litigants and counsel should take the hint. The next time a Karnataka firm sues a Tamil Nadu firm, the plaint should be filed in Chennai or Bengaluru, where the courts are fully competent to decide it.