Handle accident claims with compassion: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court (SC) directed all tribunals considering accident claims to be reasonably compassionate while deciding compensation for accident victims. It also directed them to take into consideration the victims’ loss of future earnings.

SC said compensation isn’t a “bonanza” and so, while determining the compensation, tribunals and courts, including the high courts, are “statutorily charged with the responsibility of fixing a just compensation”.

A bench of justices GS Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly passed
these directions on Tuesday while allowing an appeal filed by Yadava Kumar, a 33-year-old Bangalore-based painter. Kumar had suffered multiple fractures after a speeding tempo knocked him down when he was waiting to cross a road in Bangalore on March 24, 2003.

After he filed a claim petition on February 3, 2006, the motor accident claims’ tribunal awarded him Rs52,000, not considering his loss of future earning. Last year, the Karnataka high court increased the amount to Rs72,000, but also refused to grant him compensation for the loss of future earning.

The doctor who examined Kumar said he could not lift weights. He also said Kumar suffered 33% disability in his right upper limb, 21% in his left upper limb and his whole body suffered 20% disability. Kumar is now finding it difficult to work as a painter or even do any other manual work.

After Kumar moved SC, the bench has fixed Rs1.22 lakh towards his loss of future earnings. It directed the National Insurance Company Ltd to pay Rs2 lakh to Kumar.

The judges said in determining the compensation, the court must be “liberal and not niggardly” as in a “free country, law must value life and limb on a generous scale”.

The bench held that courts and tribunals must realise there is a distinction between compensation and damage. Compensation may include a claim for damage, but is more comprehensive.

Damages are given for an injury suffered, whereas compensation stands on a higher footing since it is given for the “atonement of injury” caused and the intention behind it is to “put back the injured party as far as possible in the same position, as if the injury has not taken place”, by way of grant of pecuniary relief.

Thus, in the matter of computation of compensation, the approach must be more broad-based than in the mere assessment of damages. There can’t be any “rigid or mathematical precision” in determining the amount of compensation, SC said.