JUDGMENT
Harilal Agarwal, J.
1. These two appeals arising out of the same judgment and award, were heard together and are being disposed of herewith.
2. First I will take up M. A. 136 of 1981. Being dissatisfied with the compensation awarded, the appellant, a judicial officer since retired who was involved in a motor accident, has filed this appeal. He was driving a Fiat car on 14-11-1966 on Jhajha-Munger Road when it collided with a truck belonging to respondent No. 1 and driven by his driver. At that time the appellant was aged 53 years and drawing a
salary of Rs. 1,500/- in the Superior Judicial Service. The said truck was insured with the New India Assurance Co. Ltd. In that road accident the appellant suffered various injuries, namely, (i) fracture of certain ribs and (ii) fracture of sternum, besides some other minor injuries. The car was also badly damaged. He filed a petition of claim before the Claims Tribunal, Munger, for Rs. 53,000/- under the following heads :
1)
Expenses incurred in his treatment including extra domestic expenses for his attendants
…
Rs. 3,000/-
2)
Special damage for repair of his motor car as well as prospective expenses including loss of earning etc.
…
Rs. 5,000/-
3)
Non-pecuniary losses
a)
Pain, suffering and shock
…
Rs. 5,000/-
b)
Loss of amenities of life
…
Rs. 5,000/-
c)
Loss of expectancy of life
…
Rs. 30,000/-
d)
Inconvenience and discomfort
…
Rs. 5,000/-
Rs. 53,000/-
3. The fact of the accident and the injury sustained by the appellant as well as the damage to the car are not in dispute. The Tribunal, however, had allowed a sum of Rs. 40,000/- in all under the following heads :
i) Taxi fare for bringing the injured
to the hospital ... ... Rs. 100/-
ii) Cottage ... ... Rs. 406/-
iii) Medicine ... ... Rs. 450/-
iv) House rent for the
attendants ... ... Rs. 220/-
v) Establishment cost for the
attendants ... ... Rs. 2,500/-
------------------
Rs. 3,676/-
Therefore, under the first item of pecuniary losses the Tribunal has allowed a sum of Rs. 676/- more than that claimed by the appellant.
Under the second item of pecuniary losses the Tribunal has allowed the following amounts :
Transportation cost of the car
…
Rs. 150/-
Fare for the family members
…
Rs. 15/-
Damage suffered by the appellant on account of the damage
done to the water pump which was being carried in the car and since it could
not be installed in his agricultural field, the standing crops were damaged
…
Rs. 4,000/-
Cost of repair of the car
…
Rs. 2,850/-
Travelling expenses incurred by the relations in course of
appellant’s medical treatment including the amount spent by his one son In
course of his stay in Patna (1500+2500)
…
Rs. 4,000/-
Rs. 11,015/-
Under the heading of non-pecuniary losses, all the items, except the sum of Rs. 30,000/-claimed as loss in expectation of life, were allowed. Thus the total of the damages allowed under the pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses comes to Rs. 29,691/-, but the Tribunal has allowed even a higher amount as already said earlier, namely, Rs. 40,000/- on the ground that in between the period of accident and the date of the award “the prices of all the commodities had increased at least by double and the value of the money had come down and hence he is entitled to double the amount”. Besides, the Tribunal has also allowed interest on the amount of compensation from the date of the award.
4. In spite of the fact that apparently the appellant has been allowed many inadmissible and inflated claims, he has filed the present appeal. The Insurance company has also filed the other appeal, namely, M. A. No, 132 of 1981.
It is no doubt true that according to the reported decisions of the various High Courts including the Supreme Court, if no interference can be made in the appeal by the insurance company on the question of quantum of the compensation awarded by the Tribunal, this Court will feel helpless in interfering with the many illegal items of claim allowed by the Tribunal, some of which were even not claimed For example, the amount spent over repair of the car which even did not belong to the appellant and for which a claim would lie against the Insurance Company separately, as well as the amount of expenditure incurred by the appellant’s relations in coming to visit him or,
for the matter of that, remaining at Patna on taking a house on rent, could hardly be said to be an amount which could be related to the matter of compensating the appellant for the injury suffered by him. In cases of personal injury the duty of the Claims Tribunal is to separately ascertain and determine under different heads the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages and although the eventual award must be in a lump sum, the sum awarded must indicate the different parts constituting the lump sum to find out as to whether any wrong principle of law has been applied or whether there any erronsous estimate of damages has been made. The basic principle, so far as loss of earning power and out of pocket expenses are concerned, is that the injured person should be placed in the same financial position so far as can be done, by an award of money as he would have been, had the accident not happened.
It was observed by Lord Moris in 1964 AC 326 that in the process of giving compensation there must be endeavour to secure some uniformity in the general method of approach and the award must be reasonable and assessed with moderation.
5. Mr. Katriar, who argued the appeal on behalf of the injured, claimed that the Tribunal should have granted him (1) interest from the date of the application, (2) the costs, (3) Rs. 2,500/- incurred by the second son of the appellant as his expenses while staying at Patna and his coming and going to attend his father, and (4) a further sum of at least Rs. 3,000/- on account of inflation already noticed by the Tribunal while raising the amount to Rs. 40,000/-.
6. While dealing with the compensation allowed by the Tribunal, I have already indicated my feelings that the Tribunal has gone out of its way in showing favours to the appellant and, therefore, to raise the amount of compensation any further would be doing injustice. Apart from that, none of the claims just mentioned above is maintainable in law.
So far as the question of interest is concerned, on the date of the application on the provision for awarding interest (Section 110CC) was not there. This happened to be included for the first time in 1969 and a Bench of this Court in Prafulla Kumar v. Suresh Kumar AIR 1977 Pat 248 has
observed that this provision had no retrospective effect. I have my own reservations regarding the view taken by the learned Judges in this regard, and on construing Section 110CC it may be held that interest could be awarded in a pending proceeding at least from the date the provision regarding award of interest was inserted, because it empowers the Tribunal to award interest “at such rate and from such date not earlier than the date of making the claim……”
In my view, therefore, it could be possible to award interest from the date of the coming into force of this provision, but in order to avoid the acceleration of the amount already awarded, I would not grant any interest nor the amount of cost.
7. Regarding the grant of a consolidated amount over and above the amount of compensation assessed and awarded under different heads by the Tribunal, on account of the depreciation in the money value, reliance was placed upon the only decision in this regard in Babu Mansa v. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, AIR 1978 Guj 134 wherein the headnote, no doubt, says that the fall in the value of money leads to a continuing reassessment of these awards, but that observation has been made in an entirely different context which I shall presently indicate. The learned Judge referred to the comparative assessment of awards made by the Courts in England for the loss of sight during 1960 to 1974 to show that on account of the fall in the value of money continuing re-assessment of the awards of damages was made from time to time at certain points. In this background it was observed that on account of the fall in the value of money continuing re-assessment of the awards and periodical re-assessment of the damages have to be kept in view. Taking this fact into consideration the High Court raised the amount of Rs. 3,000/- awarded under the head of pain and suffering and loss of amenities of enjoyment of life. The case is not at all an authority for the proposition that on this account the Court had the jurisdiction to increase the amount of compensation already determined by it with reference to the evidence and the claim already made by the claimant.
8. Now I come to M. A. No. 132 of 1981. It is, no doubt, true that the Insurance Company cannot challenge the quantum of compensation
as such and that the defence open to an Insurance Company in a claim under Section 110 is restricted to those specified in Sections 95 and 96(2), and thus the Insurance Company cannot question the quantum of compensation. As provided under Section 100C(2-A), the Insurance Company however can challenge the compensation where there is a collusion between the person making the claim and the person against whom the claim is made, or the person against whom the claim has been made has failed to contest the claim. The Insurance Company is entitled to contest the claim on all or any of the grounds that are available to the person against whom the claim has been made. It was, therefore, rightly contended on behalf of the appellant Insurance Company in this appeal that in view of the fact that the insured did not enter contest before the Tribunal, the Insurance Company was entitled to challenge the quantum of compensation as awarded by the Tribunal at least in respect of those of the items which were outside the ambit of the legal liabilities and not admissible in law.
Even assuming that there may be some difficulty for the Insurance Company to argue its appeal under the cover of Sub-section (2-A) of Section 100C with respect to all the items of claim, the challenge at least to the amount awarded on account of the fall of the money value, must be allowed to be raised on the simple ground that it cannot be said to be a ‘quantum’ of compensation claimed under the different heads by the injured. The disability created for the Insurance Company, even if applied with full force, could be confined only to the items of claim admissible in law and not to the ex gratia and unauthorised amounts added to the compensation. The Tribunal, in my considered opinion, committed a serious error of jurisdiction and law in raising the amount of compensation by almost accepting the entire amounts claimed under different heads on the plea of fall in the money value. If this proposition is applied by Courts to civil litigations, then the Court will have to multiply the amount claimed by three or four times on the ground that the present value of the benefit or its equivalent supplied to the defendant had since gone much high. The only panacea that the law provides for the delays in the return of the benefit is the award of interest. There may be scope for knocking off many other items of claim in the
appeal of the company, but I would decline to interfere with the award in that regard at least for one of the reasons indicated above, and prefer to take the line of least resistance.
9. In the result, while I do not find any merit in M. A. No. 136 of 1981 and dismiss it, I would allow M. A. No. 132 of 1981 in part by reducing the amount of compensation of Rs. 40,000/- to Rs. 29,691/- which was the total compensation assessed and determined by the Tribunal, thus giving some respite to the appellant company from the extravagant and inflated claims allowed by the Tribunal. In the circumstances, I would leave the parties to bear their own costs.
Yadunath Sharan Singh, J.
I agree.