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Legal Case Shots

Court judgements broken down into the case type, how the decision played out, and the lesson worth remembering, with the full judgement available as a PDF.

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What is Legal Case Shots?+

Legal Case Shots is a searchable database of Supreme Court of India judgments, each broken down into the case type, the court's key holding, and a practical lesson learnt, with the full judgment available as a PDF for citation or deeper reading.

Motor Accident Compensation LawSupreme Court of India

Shyam Prasad Nagalla v. The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 193Decided 11 Feb 2025
Civil Appeal No. 2324 of 2025 (arising out of SLP(C) No. 818/2025)
Justice Sanjay Karol · Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra

Background

Lakshmi Nagalla, a 43-year-old software engineer and US permanent resident earning $11,600 a month, died in 2009 when an APSRTC bus collided head-on with the car she was travelling in with her family in Andhra Pradesh. Her husband and two daughters sought Rs. 9 crore in compensation; the Tribunal awarded about Rs. 8.05 crore using a multiplier of 14, but the High Court cut it to about Rs. 5.76 crore by reducing the multiplier to 10 on the reasoning that her income was in foreign currency.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held, first, that the correct date for fixing the currency conversion rate is the date the claim petition was filed (not the accident date or a later date), applying its own precedent in Jiju Kuruvila; second, that there is no separate, lower multiplier rule for people who earn in foreign currency: the standard age-based multiplier from Pranay Sethi (14, for a 43-year-old) applies regardless of the currency of income. Recalculating on this basis, the Court restored a multiplier of 14 and fixed final compensation at Rs. 9,64,52,220, significantly higher than both the Tribunal's and the High Court's figures.

Lesson Learnt

The multiplier used to calculate a deceased breadwinner's compensation depends only on their age, not on whether they were paid in rupees or a foreign currency, and the exchange rate used should be the one prevailing when the compensation claim was filed.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)
Shyam Prasad Nagalla v. The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation – Legal Case Shots | LegalAware