The Hindu Business Line : Mothers age when sons die

REVERENCE for life is the highest court of appeal, said Albert Schweitzer. Compensation cases such as P.V. Subba Rao and another vs Sunkari Varahalamma and another that the Andhra Pradesh High Court decided recently are also about reverence for life, though with a money component.

Here, the claim was under Section 166 of the Motor Vehicles Act, seeking "a compensation of Rs 2,00,000 on account of death of the deceased, who was the defendants' son and who died in a motor accident", about five years ago. He was a diploma holder "working as a Supervisor with the first appellant" and on the date of the accident he was travelling "as a pillion rider on scooter, which was driven by the second appellant."

The narrative continues: "When they were proceeding near Ramabadrapuram, the scooter met with an accident, the deceased fell down from the scooter and received serious injuries." Subsequently he succumbed to injuries . The claim was made on the ground that due to untimely and sudden demise of the deceased, the parents lost dependency."

At the court and even earlier, before the Tribunal, the appellants denied the allegations of the claimants. The appellants said that the deceased himself drove the vehicle on the date of the accident and that due to his own negligence the scooter met with an accident and he suffered severe injuries.

It was the case of the appellants that as the accident had occurred due to negligence on the part of the deceased, they are not liable to pay compensation.

However, the court noted that the Tribunal had, looking at oral and documentary evidence on record, recorded a finding that the accident was due to negligence on the part of the second appellant. The alternative theory that the deceased drove the vehicle doesn't find any mention in the judgment, apparently because the court didn't deem it fit to explore. A different problem arose, though, about the amount of compensation.

At the Tribunal, the claimants had stated that their son was earning Rs 2,500 per month and contributed much of it to them.

Yet, the Tribunal assessed the earnings at Rs 1,500 per month, and after deducting one-third of the same towards personal expenses, worked out the contribution as Rs 1,000 per month. This meant Rs 12,000 per annum. Taking into account the age of the deceased, which was 23 years, the Tribunal applied a multiplier of 17 to arrive at a compensation of Rs 2,04,000.

The appellants' counsel Jayanti S. C. Sekhar said that the Tribunal ought not to have applied the multiplier 17 for the purpose of awarding compensation, and that the compensation awarded by the Tribunal was `excessive and exorbitant', without considering the age of the mother of the deceased. Wryly, one may add that mothers do age faster when they lose their sons.

Well, to speak for the claimants, it was Anjana Devi who submitted that the Tribunal had assessed the earnings of the deceased at Rs 1,500 though he was earning Rs 2,500 per month. "In that view of the matter, the compensation awarded by the Tribunal below cannot be said to be excessive and exorbitant," she said.

The Tribunal had clearly erred in applying the multiplier 17 having regard to the age of the deceased, said Justice R. Subhash Reddy, pointing out that the mother's age was 47 when the son died. Appropriate multiplier for the age group 45-50 is 13, opined Justice Reddy, and fixed the compensation at Rs 1,56,000 (that is, Rs 12,000 x 13), with interest at 9 per cent.

LawLane@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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