Every minute is precious, and a Bengaluru man proved it by suing PVR and INOX for wasting his time. The man took the phrase "time is money" quite seriously and dragged PVR Cinemas and INOX (now merged with PVR) to court for wasting 25 minutes of his time.

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Frustrated by the delay caused by the long advertisements before the screening of Sam Bahadur (starring Vicky Kaushal) in 2023, Abhishek MR approached the consumer court, seeking action against the multiplex chain for delaying the movie’s start time.

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Taking action on the man's complaint, the consumer court ruled in his favour, ordering the multiplex chain to compensate him with Rs 65,000.

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Time is money 

As reported by Bar & Bench, the man had also sued BookMyShow alongside the multiplexes. However, the court ruled that the ticket booking platform could not be held responsible since it was only responsible for ticket bookings and had no control over show timings.

Saying that time is money in this fast-paced world, the court said, "In the new era, time is considered as money, each one's time is very precious, no one has right to gain benefit out of others time and money. 25-30 (minutes) is no less to sit idle in the theatre and watch whatever the theatre telecasts. It is very hard for busy people with tight schedule watching unnecessary advertisements. However, they make their own arrangements to get some relaxation with family. (This does) not mean that people have no other work to do."

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In his complaint, Abhishek MR that in 2023 he booked three tickets for a 4.05 pm show for the movie Sam Bahadur. As per his calculations and the movie's runtime, he expected the film to conclude by 6:30 pm, allowing him to return to work as planned. However, the screening was delayed due to extended advertisements and trailers, wasting nearly 30 minutes of his time.

"The complainant could not attend other arrangements and appointments which were scheduled for the day, has faced losses that cannot be calculated in terms of money as a compensation," the complaint read.

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He also stated that his "precious time" was wasted and the playing advertisements are "clearly within the meaning of unfair trade practice as they wrongly communicated the show timings.''

The court also ordered PVR and INOX to pay Rs 50,000 for unfair trade practices and wasting the time of the moviegoer, Rs 10,000 for filing the complaint, and Rs 5,000 for mental agony.

In addition to the compensation to the complainant, the court also imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on PVR Cinemas and INOX.

In response to the complaint, PVR Cinemas and Inox stated that they are required to play certain Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to educate and spread awareness among the audience.