Income from job of dependant cant be compensation for accident: HC

The income earned by the dependent of a road accident victim, such as wife or son or either of the parents, cannot be considered as compensation, the Delhi high court ruled.
Income of an accident victim’s family members should not have any bearing on the amount of compensation that they are entitled to after an accident, the high court held.

With this verdict, the court disagreed with the view taken by the Motor Accident Claim Tribunal (MACL) that earnings of the victim’s wife was liable to be adjusted against the compensation amount. One Neelam Singh had got a job on compassionate grounds after her husband, Jagjit Singh, died in a road accident in 1996.

The National Assurance Company Limited (NACL) had pleaded that the deceased was not entitled to any claim as she got a job on compassionate grounds.
But the Delhi high court ruled that “salary earned by (victim’s) wife was due to the work put in by her and could not be adjusted or treated as compensation for the loss of earning of her husband”. The court directed the NACL to pay Rs 20 lakh in compensation to Neelam.

The court also said that “the Tribunal erred in recording a finding that the salary earned by her (Neelam) would compensate for the loss of salary which was being earned by the deceased (Singh). It explained that after giving the job to the victim’s wife it couldn’t be said that there was no loss of dependency.