KUPPAMMAL Vs. RUKMANI AMMAL AND ANR.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ONE Chinnaswami Rowth met his death in the Bommidi Railway disaster of 1920. He left Thayarammal his wife, a daughter the plaintiff and Sriramulu a baby, one or two months old. The railway company gave a sum of Rs. 2500 as compensation and with that sum Thayarammal managed to maintain herself and her children. She got the plaintiff married and made several purchases. She acquired two lands and a house described in the plaint A schedule. She reconstructed the house. She also laid out moneys in the shape of loans to third parties and the outstandings left by her are described in schedule B attached to the plaint. She is also alleged to have left some jewels which are described in schedule C. The plaintiff claimed that the properties described in the various schedules attached to the plaint were all the stridhanam properties of her mother Thayarammal and that they were her absolute properties. The claim therefore was that the plaintiff was the stridhanam heiress of her mother and that she was entitled to all the properties. Thayarammal the mother died in April 1937. Sriramulu survived her and died in 1940 leaving a widow, defendant 1 in the suit. Defendant 2 is impleaded as being in possession of some of the jewels belonging to the mother. Defendant 1's case was that the properties all belonged to Chinnaswami Rowth and were not the absolute properties of Thayarammal. The positive case put forward was that the properties were purchased out of the funds left by the plaintiff's father, Chinnaswami Rowth. The trial Court found that there was no proof that the properties were purchased with the funds left by Chinnaswami Rowth. The plaintiff did not state in the plaint wherefrom her mother got the funds with which she acquired the properties in question. At the trial it was mentioned that her mother, Ammani Ammal, gave a large sum of money to Thayarammal and that that was the source of Thayarammal's later acquisitions. Both this case of the plaintiff and the case of the defendants that the source of the purchase money was traceable to the assets of Chinnaswami Rowth were found against. It transpired that really the sum of Rupees 2500 which was paid by the railway company formed the nucleus of these acquisitions. Thayarammal seems to have been a very prudent woman. She managed the sum that was given by the railway company very carefully, lent out the moneys, purchased properties, got the daughter married, reconstructed a house; and left some properties, immovable and movable. These are the findings of both the lower Courts. On these findings the question is whether Thayarammal and the plaintiff got any right in the properties. Under the Fatal Accidents Act (13 [XIII] of 1855),

(2.) THUS the death of the person injured is no defence and it does not absolve the party at fault from paying damages to the relatives of the deceased. The persons who are entitled to recover damages, notwithstanding the death of the injured party, must be the wife, husband, parent or child. The action should be brought for the benefit of all or any of these persons and the Court is to apportion the amount among these persons in proportion to the loss caused to each of them by the death of the deceased. Under the corresponding English Act we find a similar provision, only, instead of the Court it is the jury that has to determine the amount and to fix the proportion in which the parties entitled to the amount should divide the same. In cases where the amount is paid not through Court but by private settlement, the question is more difficult, but we have to be guided by the same principles which would have applied if the amount had been recovered by a suit or action. There are some decisions which have dealt with this question. In Bulmer v. Bulmer, (1884) 25 Ch. D. 409, a sum of money was received from a railway company by way of compensation without any action having been brought under Lord Campbell's Act, 9 & 10 Vict. C. 93. The executors who realised the amount brought an action in the Chancery Division, to which all the relatives of the deceased were made parties, asking for a declaration as to the persons entitled to the money. It was held that the Court could distribute the fund among the relatives of the deceased in the same manner as a jury could have done in an action under the Act (which is against the person bound to pay the damages) and proceeded to divide the amount among the relatives. At p. 412 Chitty J. observes this:

(3.) THE plaintiff claimed that all the properties are her mother's stridhanam properties. While denying that the properties were the mother's stridhanam properties, no alternative case was set up on behalf of the defendants that the mother gave up what was her stridhanam property in favour of her son. All that can be said in this case is that, as the daughter's claim was settled by some moneys being spent probably from the subsequent income realised from the investment of the original sum of Rs. 2500, them mother and son treated themselves as equal 9 owners of whatever remained in the family. There are no materials from which one can hold that the mother gave up during her I lifetime all her interest in favour of her son. As stated above, there is no such plea in the written statement, and the evidence that has been referred to by Mr. T.L. Venkatarama Aiyar, the learned Counsel for respondent, is not enough to show that there was any such relinquishment by the mother in favour of her son. All the purchases were made in the mother's name. Exhibit P -17 of 1930 and Exs. P -18 and P -19 of 1933 stood in her name. The patta stands in her name. Exhibit D -6, the Cist Receipt Book, shows that throughout her lifetime the cist was paid in her name. We have the bills issued for the purchase of timber for the erection of the suit house, and Ex. P -24 is a bill issued in her name. Exhibits P -24 (a) to P -24 (h), though not issued in her name, were obviously bills issued to her. It is true that in the invitation issued for the grahapravesam ceremony of the suit house the son's name was mentioned, but a widow with a son would not, even in cases where she builds a house for herself, issue the invitation in her own name but would issue it in the name of her son. That is not a ground for saying that even the house was treated as her son's property. It is true that subsequent to the death of Thayarammal the plaintiff did not immediately claim that she is entitled to her mother's properties. Reference is made by Mr. Venkatarama Aiyar to a panchayat at which the plaintiff seems to have claimed a payment of a debt due to herself in respect of a promissory note executed by the mother in her favour of a hand loan taken by the mother from her and in respect of some other sums spent by the daughter for the mother's illness. No doubt there was a panchayat and the sums claimed were found to be true, and the money paid. Exhibit D -28 is the memorandum drawn up at that time and that is signed by both the plaintiff and Sriramulu, but there is nothing to show that the properties were expressly or even impliedly admitted by the plaintiff to belong exclusively to Sriramulu. The only comment that can be made is that she herself was the heiress to her mother's property, that if all the property was her mother's property, there was no meaning in claiming the same against properties which devolved on herself. In the view that I have taken that the mother was entitled only to a half there is no such incongruity in the daughter having claimed the repayment of the sum due to her.