On the 17th of February, 2021, the division bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India (“SC”) in Compack Enterprises India (P) Ltd. V Beant Singh, 2021 SCC OnLine SC 97 (“Compack”), provided a very important clarification with respect to a consent decree. The SC observed that a consent decree doesn’t always become an estoppel by judgment against the consenting parties and the same therefore can very well be challenged on the grounds of fraud, misrepresentation, mistake and also when there is/are any clerical or arithmetic error(s). As a matter of fact, the law surrounding ‘consent decree’ has always remained a bone of contention between and among the disputing and consenting parties – this fact is aggravated by the contradictory and ambiguous interpretation of the same by various courts.
