The Supreme Court has clarified that an appellate court is entitled to interfere with a finding of fact if the appraisal of the evidence by the trial court "suffers from a material irregularity or is based on inadmissible evidence or on conjectures and surmises". This observation was made in a matter arising out of appeals challenging a reversing judgment of the Karnataka High Court. A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Atul S Chandurkar underscored the important duty that an appellate court exercises, particularly when it seeks to reverse the judgment of the trial court. The bench said, "This certainly does not mean that when an appeal lies on facts, the appellate court is not competent to reverse a finding of fact arrived at by the trial judge". Court pointed out that the high court also committed a jurisdictional error in not reappreciating the evidence adduced before the trial court, which as an appellate court the high court was bound to undertake.