Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923 – Schedule to the Act – Functional disability – Reduction of – When not proper – Determination of compensation – Appellant, a forging machine operator met with an accident while operating the machine losing one or more phalanges of four fingers of his right hand – Commissioner allowed 100% disability and determined the compensation – In appeal, High Court while determining the compensation reduced the disability to 34% – Interference with: Held: There can be a departure from the Schedule in deciding the functional disability – There is no loss assessment for amputation of two and a half phalanges of the index finger as per the schedule, which in any event has to be taken as a whole loss for which the disability is 14% – Hence, in any event the disability even as determined by the Schedule to the Act would be 37% aggregating the total loss – Further, the disability as determined by the statute is for the specific loss of a phalanx or a finger and in the event of more than one such loss it cannot be said that a mere aggregation would determine the actual loss – Appellant’s working hand was seriously mutilated by the loss of one or more phalanges of four fingers – The middle and index finger having been disabled completely and the ring finger and the little finger having lost two phalanges and one phalanx respectively, functionally it is difficult for the right hand to be used with the same grip as available prior to the accident – Though a 100% disability cannot be assessed, insofar as the mutilation of the one hand which is also the operational hand, the right hand, the loss is determined at 50% – Compensation determined. [Paras 7, 8, 10, 11]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Divya Pandey. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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