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Non-possession of driving licence at the fatal point of time is not fatal to claim of full insurance compensation from the insurance company, observed the Madras High Court in Krishnaveni and Another Vs. Manokaran and Others. The insurance company paid only half of the amount of Rs 6,48,000 assessed as dependency loss on the ground that there was contributory negligence on the part of the deceased, in that he was not in possession of driving licence at the fatal point of time.
The High Court dismissed this stand of the insurer saying that non-possession of licence can by no stretch of imagination be said to have contributed to the accident and the resultant death. Implicit in the verdict is the truism that while traffic enforcement authorities can penalise a driver for non-possession of driving licence, the insurer cannot, unless it can prove that the deceased did not have a valid driving licence at all at the fatal point of time.
In other words, if the driving licence was left at the place of work or residence or anywhere else, such a lapse is not fatal to entertainment of full insurance compensation and the insurance company cannot wriggle out by adducing contributory negligence as the reason for halving the compensation amount.
(The author is a New Delhi-based chartered accountant)
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