UNITED INDIA INSURANCE CO LTD Vs. BUDHI RAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BY way of the present appeal the appellant seeks to challenge the impugned award mainly on three grounds that the Tribunal has wrongly applied the multiplier of 17 years by ignoring the age of the parents of the deceased and has taken into consideration the age of the deceased. The next contention of the counsel for the appellant is that the Tribunal has wrongly taken into consideration future prospects of the deceased when no such future prospects were proved by the respondents/ claimants on record. Thirdly, the appellant is aggrieved by the finding of the Tribunal, granting 1/3rd personal expenses out of the income of the deceased, although the deceased being of 26 years of age at the time of accident would have soon got married and thereafter the personal expenses were bound to be increased. Before adverting to deal with the said contentions of the counsel for the appellant it would be desirable to set out the brief facts of the case, which are as under:-

(2.) I have heard learned counsel for the parties at a considerable length and have perused the records. On the first contention pertaining to the multiplier, the counsel for the appellant contended that the age of the deceased was 26 years while, age of the mother of the deceased was 50 years and that of the father was 55 years and, therefore, appropriate multiplier under the Second Schedule taking the average of the age of the parents would be 11 years, but the Tribunal has applied the multiplier of 17 after taking into account the age of the deceased, who died at the age of 26 years. The contention of the counsel for the appellant is that the legal position in this regard is well settled that the multiplier has to be applied considering the age of the deceased or the age of the dependents whichever is higher, but in the present case the Tribunal has ignored this settled law position and has wrongly applied the multiplier after considering the age of the deceased only and not considering the age of the parents of the deceased. In this regard, the Apex Court has held in New India Assurance Co. Ltd. v. Kalpana, (2007) 3 SCC 538

(3.) AS per the age of the parents of the deceased the multiplier under the second Schedule of the Motor Vehicles Act is 11 and, therefore, the impugned Award determining the said multiplier of 17 needs to be modified by applying the multiplier of 11. As observed above, the legal position in this regard is no more res integra that the choice of multiplier is determined by the age of the deceased or that of the claimant whichever is higher. Taking the age of the claimants/respondents, the appropriate multiplier as per the second Schedule of the Motor Vehicles Act, would be 11 and not 17 as assessed by the Tribunal. The multiplier is accordingly modified from 17 to 11.