Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 – ss.166 and 140 – Enhancement of the compensation – Victim, aged 20 years pursuing Chartered Accountancy (Final), and undergoing articleship, was travelling in the car driven by his roommate, which collided with a truck stationed in the middle of the road without parking lights, indicators, reflectors or any cautionary sign, making it completely invisible due to the darkness, at night – Victim, met with an accident resulting in fatal injuries and succumbed thereto, while his roommate also suffered injuries – FIR registered and charge-sheet filed against the truck driver – Parents of the victim sought compensation – Truck driver, owner and insurer of the offending truck’s case that the truck had suffered puncture in its rear tyres and had been parked on the extreme left side of the road, and that the accident occurred solely due to rash and negligent driving of the car driver – Tribunal held that the accident had occurred due to the negligence of the truck driver in leaving the vehicle stationed on the road without adequate warning or precautionary measures – Tribunal assessed the compensation taking into account his educational and professional trajectory and awarded Rs.81,21,900/- – Appeals by insurer and claimants – High Court affirmed the finding of the tribunal, and maintained the award in its entirety – Correctness:
Held: As regards negligence, no reason to take a view different from that concurrently taken by the tribunal and the High Court – Mere fact that the car collided with the truck from behind cannot, by itself, lead to an inference of negligence on the part of its driver – Issue of negligence to be examined in the totality of circumstances – Stationary vehicle occupying the road in the dead of night without any warning indication poses an evident hazard to road users – Tribunal and the High Court, on appreciation of the evidence, rightly concluded that the proximate cause of the accident was the negligent act of the truck driver in leaving the vehicle unattended on the road without adequate precautionary measures – No evidence worth the name adduced to establish negligence on the part of the car driver, and in the absence thereof, the plea of contributory negligence cannot be accepted on mere conjecture – Determination of compensation under the MV Act is guided by the principle of awarding ‘just compensation’, which must account for the future prospects of the deceased and such determination cannot travel into the realm of conjecture – Compensation cannot be founded on assumptions of assured professional success or on salary benchmarks of unrelated successful professionals – Exercise of assessing compensation by the tribunal, sufficiently accounts for the professional promise of the deceased and leaves no room for further enhancement on the aspect of loss of dependency – Any further increase on that basis would cease to be compensatory and would enter the impermissible domain of speculation – Considering that the accident took place in 2013, no inclination to interfere with the same by reducing the award under any heads – Life of a young individual and the loss suffered by his family cannot be measured in precise monetary terms, and determination of ‘just compensation’ under the MV Act does not admit of mathematical exactitude – MV Act being a beneficial legislation, the duty of the Court is to ensure that just compensation is awarded, even if legitimate conventional head is omitted by the courts below – On facts, the claimants, being the parents of the deceased unmarried son, entitled to compensation under the head of ‘filial consortium’ – Compensation awarded by the tribunal, as affirmed by the High Court, enhanced by an amount of Rs.80,000/- towards filial consortium, payable to the claimants in equal measure, together with interest – Compensation awarded by the tribunal, as affirmed by the High Court, modified from Rs.81,21,900/- to Rs.82,01,900/- along with interest. [Paras 14-30]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Nidhi Jain As per Para 59.8 of Pranay Sethi judgment.. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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