SATYA BALA JAIN Vs. PUJA ROLLER FLOUR MILLS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appeal is for enhancement of claim for compensation as well as for casting liability on the Insurance Company for the amount determined and not merely restricted to Rs. 1,50,000/- . It was a case of death of a person who was working as SDO in the government department on a salary of Rs. 5,370/-. The claimants were the widow, mother and two children. The Tribunal applied a deduction of 1/3 rd and applied a multiplier of 16 to assess the dependency at Rs. 6,72,000/-. It restricted the liability to Rs. 1,50,000/- since the policy had been issued under the Motor Vehicles Act of 1939 and it was not shown that any additional premium had been paid for unlimited liability after the commencement of the Act of 1988. The Tribunal, therefore, allowed for enforcement of the award beyond Rs. 1,50,000/- against the owner and driver.

(2.) The counsel seeks for a reassessment of compensation in the light of the judgment of the Supreme Court in Sarla Verma Versus Delhi Transport Corporation and another, 2009 6 SCC 121. I will make a provision for 30% increase and take the average income to be Rs. 6,981/- and make a 1/4 th deduction for personal expenses and take the contribution to the family at Rs. 5,235.75 per month. Annualizing the yield and applying a multiplier of 14, the loss of dependence would be Rs. 8,79,606/-. The multiplier adopted as 16 will have to be discarded as not in conformity with the law laid down above. Even while assessing the dependence, I will provide for contribution to the family including the wife, although the counsel for the respondent-Insurance Company would argue that the wife was herself earning as a Lecturer in a College and, therefore, was not a dependent. It will be wrong and unwise to discard a spouse from the array of dependents by the only fact that such a person was also an earning member. A husband, by being an earning member during his life time, cannot cease to be dependent on a wife any more than a wife as a earning member can cease to be one. Cases of both spouses earning make possible a larger corpus to be available for a better standard of living. The dependence here is not for a bare earthly necessities. Dependency here, on the other hand, is to increase the sum of material happiness that a joint contribution to the family could bring.

(3.) There has to be a provision also for conventional heads of claim which I would add as Rs. 5,000/- for the wife and Rs. 5,000/- together for the then minor children. I will also add Rs. 2,500/- for funeral expenses and Rs. 2,500/- for loss to estate and make an additional amount of Rs. 15,000/-, aggregating Rs. 8,94,606, rounded off to Rs. 8,95,000/- as the amount of compensation payable to the claimants.