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Mohammed Siddique & Anr. v. National Insurance Company Ltd. & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 17Decided 8 Jan 2020
Civil Appeal No. 79 of 2020
Justice N.V. Ramana · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

A 23-year-old man died after being thrown off a motorcycle when a car hit it from behind, while he was riding as one of two pillion passengers. The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal awarded his parents about Rs. 11.66 lakh in compensation, but the High Court slashed this to about Rs. 4.14 lakh, holding the victim partly at fault for riding three-up on the bike, doubting his claimed salary for lack of documentary proof, and applying a lower compensation multiplier. The parents appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that merely violating the law by riding three persons on a motorcycle does not amount to contributory negligence unless that violation actually caused or worsened the accident: here, there was no evidence that the extra rider caused the car to hit the motorcycle from behind, so the 10% deduction was unjustified. The Court also held that the High Court wrongly discarded the employer's unchallenged oral testimony and salary certificate about the deceased's income, merely because salary vouchers weren't produced. On the multiplier issue, the Court held that under binding three-judge-bench precedent (Munna Lal Jain), the multiplier must be based on the deceased's age, not the (older) claimants' age, supporting the Tribunal's multiplier of 18. The High Court's reduction was set aside and the Tribunal's original award was restored.

Lesson Learnt

Violating a traffic safety rule (like overcrowding a motorcycle) does not by itself establish contributory negligence in an accident claim: there must be proof that the violation actually contributed to the accident or the injury, and courts should not discount credible, unchallenged employer testimony about a victim's income just because paper records are unavailable.

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

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