NEW INDIA ASSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED Vs. SHAIK JAFFAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These four Civil Miscellaneous Appeals are preferred by the Insurance Company questioning the award of the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal. The contention of Mr. I. A Naidu is that on the findings recorded by the Tribunal, the Insurance Company could not have been made liable for paying the compensation awarded. IT is necessary to state a few facts:

(2.) On 14-12-1978, the petitioner in O.P. No. 236/1978 (First respondent in C.M.A 313/80) was driving the lorry, APQ 3547 loaded with Gammaxine bags. He was transporting them from Doopadu railway Station, to Nellore. While going on the Bombay-Nellore High Road, near Bedvel town, he met a party of music artists. They were stranded for want for transport. At their entreaty, the lorry and, accordingly, they got into the lorry. When the lorry reached K. M. 61 near Kona Samudran Cross- road, within dashed against a palmyra tree, and got damaged. The inmates, including the driver and the three music artists who got into the lorry near Badvel town, were also injured. Claims were laid by the driver, as well as the said three Artists for compensation, both against the owner of the vehicle and the insurance Company. The Tribunal found that the three music artists having paid the hire or the charges, as the case may be for travelling in the lorry, must be held to be persons carried for hire or reward, as the case may be (it found that they were carried in the cabin of the lorry) and purporting go follow the Full Bench decision of the Gujarat High Courts in Ambaben v. Usmanbhai Amirmiyya Sheikh, 1979 Acc CJ 292: (AIR 1979 Guj 9), the Tribunal held the insurance Company liable for paying the amounts awarded by it. Hence these appeal.

(3.) far as C.M.A No. 313 of 1980 is concerned, the claimant is the driver of the lorry, and there can hardly be any dispute about the liability of the Insurance Company to pay the compensation to him. No doubt, such compensation has to be determined having regard to proviso (I) to cl. (b) of sub- sec. (1) of S. 95. It is not complained before me that the determination of the quantum of compensation has not been done in accordance with the aid proviso. Therefore, so far as C.M.A. No 313 of 1980 I concerned, there can be no legitimate grievance. It is, accordingly, dismissed with costs.