LEELA GUPTA Vs. STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Ganga Prasad Gupta--the deceased, the husband of the first appellant and father of second, third and fourth appellant, was killed in a motor accident on July 8, 1985. He was then aged 39 and was officiating Executive Engineer in the Irrigation Department, State of Uttar Pradesh. Had he lived, it would have been 18 years or so before he reached the age of superannuation (i.e. 58 years). After superannuation, he would have qualified for pension. His wife and three children filed a claim petition under Section 110A of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (for short, Rs. the 1939 Act) before the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Mirzapur (for short, Rs. the Tribunal) against the respondents claiming compensation in the sum of Rs. 7,00,000/-. His gross salary on the date of accident was Rs. 2,680/- per month. The Tribunal held that deceased would have contributed Rs. 2,200/- per month (Rs. 26,400/- per year) to the family and by applying a multiplier of 18, reached the finding that the pecuniary loss to widow and children would be Rs. 4,75,200/- up to the age of his retirement. The Tribunal then deducted 1/3rd of the above considering the amount being paid in lump sum and uncertainty in life and by further deducting a sum of Rs. 40,000/- towards group insurance scheme, assessed compensation to the extent of Rs. 2,76,800/-. An amount of Rs. 15,000/- having been already paid to the claimants towards no fault liability, the Tribunal in its Award dated February 24, 1987 held that claimants are entitled to a sum of Rs. 2,61,800/- and directed the respondents to pay the said amount with pendente lite and future interest thereon @ 9% per annum.

(2.) On appeal by the claimants, the High Court held that the claimants were entitled to Rs. 4,70,000/- as compensation along with 9% simple interest per annum from the date of the claim petition until the actual payment was made. The High Court considered the matter thus:

(3.) The conventional approach in England for over a century has been that the damages are to be assessed on the basis that the fundamental purpose of an award is to achieve as nearly as possible full compensation to the plaintiff for the injuries sustained. This rule has been accepted in fatal accident actions as well. The House of Lords in Taff Vale Railway Co. v. Jenkins (1913) AC 1 laid down the test that award of damages in fatal accident action is compensation for the reasonable expectation of pecuniary benefit by the deceaseds family. The purpose of award of compensation is to put the dependants of the deceased, who had been bread-winner of the family, in the same position financially as if he had lived his natural span of life; it is not designed to put the claimants in a better financial position in which they would otherwise have been if the accident had not occurred. At the same time, the determination of compensation is not an exact science and the exercise involves an assessment based on estimation and conjectures here and there as many imponderable factors and unpredictable contingencies have to be taken into consideration. The statutory rule enacted in Section 110B of the 1939 Act (now Section 168 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988) is award of Rs. just compensation.