Actor Ravi Mohan. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
The Madras High Court, on Tuesday (September 2, 2025), referred to an arbitral tribunal, the dispute between a film production house and actor Ravi Mohan over repayment of ₹6 crore received as advance in September 2024 for acting in two movies.
Second Division Bench of Justices M. Sundar and Mummineni Sudheer Kumar passed the order while disposing of an original side appeal preferred by the actor against a single judge’s July 23, 2025 order directing him to furnish security for ₹5.90 crore.
The reference to the arbitral tribunal was made with the consent of senior counsel P.S. Raman, assisted by Vijayan Subramanian, representing the production house Bobby Touch Gold Universal Private Limited as well as the actor’s counsel S. Karthikeyi Balan.
After taking note that a retired judge of the High Court had already been appointed as a sole arbitrator, the Bench said, henceforth, the arbitral tribunal could take a call on all applications including those for furnishing security, attaching properties and so on.
It was in July this year that the production house had moved the High Court accusing the actor of not having returned the advance amount of ₹6 crore despite the termination of an agreement reached between them in September last year for acting in two movies.
The production house filed two applications – one, seeking a direction to the actor to furnish security for ₹5.9 crore until the disposal of arbitral proceedings and another to restrain him from producing a movie titled Bro Code and from acting in any other producer’s movie.
Simultaneously, Mr. Mohan too filed two applications in the High Court claiming that he had suffered a loss of ₹15 crore due to the delay in commencing the shooting of the two movies. After adjusting the advance amount, he insisted that the production house must compensate him with another ₹9 crore.
Therefore, the actor too filed two applications – one seeking a direction to the production house to furnish security for ₹9 crore until the disposal of the abritral proceedings and another to restrain the production company from alienating the rights of its film ‘Chennai City Gangsters’.
Justice Abdul Quddhose took up all the four applications together for disposal and dismissed Mr. Mohan’s applications on the ground that his was a claim for damages in which no interim order could be passed in favour of the applicant until the disposal of the arbitral proceedings.
He also recorded the submission of the production house that it was not pressing its application to restrain the actor from producing Bro Code and from acting in any other producer’s movies and that it was interested only in obtaining an order directing the actor to furnish security for ₹5.9 crore.
On finding that the production house’s request was based on a contractual claim, unlike the claim for damages made by the actor, the single judge held that the producer must necessarily be protected with an interim order until the completion of the arbitral proceedings.
Justice Quddhose directed the actor to furnish the security as sought for by the production house and hence Mr. Mohan had approached the Division Bench by filing the present appeal.
Published – September 02, 2025 05:47 pm IST
