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| M J Antony: Tight-fisted on damages | | Though we demand high amounts from foreign companies, the courts here have set low standards |
| M J Antony / New Delhi Jun 23, 2010, 00:12 IST |
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Double-digit inflation has led to fear among housewives that soon they might have to take money in their carry bags to the market and bring home the purchases in their handbags. But there is one aspect of law and life not much affected by the rising cost of living. That is the rate of compensation for death and injury awarded by tribunals in the country.
The problem was highlighted by the Supreme Court a few weeks ago in the B T Krishanppa vs United Insurance Co case. A mason suffered 48 per cent disability in an accident. The tribunal awarded him Rs 1.55 lakh for loss because of permanent injury, scaling down the degree from 48 per cent as assessed by the doctors to 20 per cent. According to the tribunal, the mason could do with one leg, as construction work is done by many persons jointly.
On appeal, the Karnataka High Court found that the compensation was too low and raised it by Rs 34,000. It gave no reason why it arrived at this figure. Obviously, the judges thought, like the CEO of BP, that the victim was a “small man”.
But this man was persistent and moved the Supreme Court. The apex court remarked that the high court, having found that the tribunal’s award was low, should have made the correct assessment. The Supreme Court chastised the high court, observing that “these areas need proper introspection and a more sensitive approach as the victim being a mason represents the weaker section of the community”.
The judges recalled the 1979 judgment in the Concord Insurance vs Nirmala Devi case in which the court had observed: “The determination of the quantum must be liberal, not niggardly, since the law values life and limb in a free country in generous scales.”
The Supreme Court has passed a number of similar judgments in the past, though its own role in the Union Carbide case is currently under attack, both for accepting the measly settlement amount and for scaling down culpability. In the Divisional Controller vs Mahadeva Shetty (2003) case, it stated that loss of life or limb could not be weighed in “golden scales”. However, the courts should consider the loss of earning capacity, deprivation of mental pleasure and impairment of life expectancy. In the R D Hattangadi vs Pest Control India case, the court stated that compensation should be fixed “with some amount of sympathy linked with the nature of the disability”.
Though the Bhopal case has raised demands for liberal damages, judges of subordinate courts cannot read big numbers, let alone the current magic figure of $20 billion in escrow account. A glance at the cases reported in the past year would show that most of them are still caged in their conservative mind. In the Oriental Insurance vs Nanak Chand case, the high court awarded Rs 2.40 lakh to a CRPF jawan who suffered 60 per cent disability in his leg, arm and forehead resulting in loss of job.
The Railway Claims Tribunal awarded Rs 7,000 for injury suffered in a local train blast in Mumbai, while according to the compensation rules the maximum was Rs 40,000. The Bombay High Court raised it to Rs 20,000. A 12-year-old boy suffered injuries resulting in loss of control over his urination and bowel motions, requiring an attendant for lifetime. The tribunal awarded Rs 2 lakh; the Madhya Pradesh High Court raised it to Rs 3.5 lakh.
Sometimes the funeral expenses awarded are disproportionate to the lifetime compensation. The Calcutta High Court granted Rs 1.3 lakh for a death and Rs 9,500 for funeral expenses (Amit vs National Insurance). In the DTC vs Neelam Deshwar case, the mother of a minor girl who was killed in an accident was given Rs 1.95 lakh by a high court (reduced from Rs 9.35 lakh granted by a tribunal), but the funeral expense was Rs 5,000. For her father, who also died in the same accident, the funeral expense awarded was Rs 15,000!
The Madhya Pradesh High Court thinks that if the husband is earning, the loss of his earning wife in an accident is no cause for filing claim. The Rajasthan High Court disagreed with that in a similar case, United India Insurance vs Ghewar Ram, and awarded Rs 2.8 lakh to the husband, rejecting the argument of the insurance company that it was excessive for the loss of a working woman.
This, however, is not the full story. The claimants who approach the court enter into a “contingency fee” arrangement with the lawyers. This is a practice promoted by “ambulance chasers” in the wake of the Bhopal holocaust. It is a huge cut from the award extorted in lieu of fees. So huge that it is said that if you lose the case, you get nothing; if you win, the lawyer gets everything.
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