Ram agreed to pay Rs. 5000 to Shyam if Shyam marries Rekha. Rekha married Sohan. Sohan died. Thereafter Shyam married Rekha. Shyam sues for Rs. 5000. Decide

Nature of the Contract

The agreement between Ram and Shyam is plainly a contingent contract within the meaning of Section 31 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872. Ram's promise to pay Rs. 5,000 is not an absolute or unconditional promise — it is made contingent upon a future uncertain event: the marriage of Shyam with Rekha. The contract is already formed at the time of the agreement; only its performance awaits the happening of that specified event.

Under Section 32 of the Act, such a contract cannot be enforced unless and until the event happens. The crucial added dimension, however, is that the event in question — the marriage of Shyam to Rekha — depends upon the future conduct of living persons, and this is precisely where Section 34 steps in to govern the matter.

Section 34: The Governing Provision

Section 34 provides that if the future event upon which a contract is contingent is the way in which a person will act at an unspecified time, the event shall be considered to become impossible when such person does anything which renders it impossible for them to so act — within any definite time, or otherwise than under further contingencies.

The Act's own illustration to Section 34 is strikingly on point and must be set out in full: "A agrees to pay B a sum of money if B marries C. C marries D. The marriage of B to C must now be considered impossible, although it is possible that D may die and that C may afterwards marry B."

The words italicised above are the key to this entire problem. The drafters of the Act, with remarkable foresight, explicitly acknowledged the very scenario that presents itself in our problem — that the person who married someone else might later be widowed, and the original marriage might thereafter become possible. And yet they declared the contract void nonetheless.

The Moment the Contract Became Void

When Rekha married Sohan, she performed an act which rendered it impossible — at any definite time and without further contingencies being fulfilled — that she would marry Shyam. The event contemplated by the contract (Shyam's marriage to Rekha) had become impossible within the meaning of Section 34, read with Section 32. At that precise moment, the contingent contract between Ram and Shyam became void.

A void contract is one that has no legal effect. It cannot be revived or resurrected. The death of Sohan and the subsequent marriage of Shyam to Rekha cannot breathe legal life back into a contract that had already ceased to exist in the eyes of law. The law does not wait to see whether further contingencies — such as the death of the intervening spouse — might eventually restore the possibility of the original event. The Act specifically and expressly rules out this reasoning in the illustration to Section 34 itself.

The Principle of Frost v. Knight

The principle underlying Section 34 was powerfully illustrated in the classic English case of Frost v. Knight (1872) LR 7 Ex 111, where the defendant had promised to marry the plaintiff upon the death of his father, and while his father was still alive, he married another woman. The court held that by marrying another woman, he had rendered it impossible that he would ever marry the plaintiff within any definite time, and the aggrieved party could sue immediately. The principle applies no less strongly here: by marrying Sohan, Rekha did exactly what Rekha's counterpart in Frost v. Knight did — she made the original event impossible under Section 34, thereby rendering the contingent contract void.

Decision

Shyam's suit must fail. He cannot recover the Rs. 5,000 from Ram.

The contingent contract between Ram and Shyam became void the moment Rekha married Sohan. Section 34, read with Section 32 of the Indian Contract Act, makes it abundantly clear that when a contingency depends on the future conduct of a living person, and that person acts in a manner that makes the contemplated event impossible — even temporarily, and even if further events might later restore the possibility — the contract becomes void. The Act's own illustration to Section 34 expressly covers the situation where Sohan (in the illustration, "D") might die, and says that even that possibility does not save the contract from being void. The subsequent marriage of Shyam to Rekha, however real and legally valid as a marriage, is legally irrelevant to the question of contractual enforceability. The contract was already dead.

Shyam married Rekha after the contract had long since ceased to exist. He performed the contingency, not to fulfil a living contract, but to fulfil one that the law had already declared void. No suit can be maintained on a void contract, and Shyam's claim must be dismissed.