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Meena Devi vs Nunu Chand Mahto @ Nemchand Mahto & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 1080Decided 13 Oct 2022
Civil Appeal No. 7255 of 2022

Background

A 12-year-old boy, Bankee Bihari, was struck and killed by a jeep while playing in front of his house in 2003. His mother, Meena Devi, filed a motor accident claim seeking Rs. 2,00,000 in compensation. The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal awarded Rs. 1,50,000, and on appeal the Jharkhand High Court enhanced this to Rs. 2,00,000, capping it at the amount originally claimed. The mother appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the compensation was inadequate and had wrongly ignored heads like future prospects and loss of prospective happiness.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court reviewed its precedents on compensation for the death of a child in a road accident (including R.K. Malik, Kishan Gopal, Lata Wadhwa, and Kurvan Ansari), which had progressively revised the outdated notional income figure in the Motor Vehicles Act's Second Schedule to account for the falling value of money. Applying the reasoning in Kishan Gopal (a similarly aged child), the Court fixed the notional income at Rs. 30,000 (including future prospects) and applied a multiplier of 15, yielding a loss of dependency of Rs. 4,50,000, plus Rs. 50,000 under conventional heads: a total of Rs. 5,00,000. The Court also clarified, relying on Nagappa vs. Gurdayal Singh, that courts are not restricted to the amount originally claimed and must award "just" compensation even if that exceeds the claim. It enhanced the award by Rs. 3,00,000 over the High Court's figure, with 7% interest from the date of the claim petition, payable by the insurer within four weeks.

Lesson Learnt

In motor accident compensation claims, courts are not bound by the amount initially claimed in the petition. They must award whatever compensation is "just and reasonable" on the evidence, and figures like notional income under the Motor Vehicles Act's outdated schedule can be judicially revised upward to reflect the real economic loss, especially in child-death cases.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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