Signing you in

The court observed that the term “legal representative” should not be confined only to the spouse, parents, or children of the deceased, “as the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act is a benevolent legislation enacted for the object of providing monetary relief to the victims or their families”.

A single-judge bench of Justice Abhay Ahuja passed a verdict on May 5 on an appeal by the deceased man’s wife and their two minor children challenging the 2001 order of the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, a detailed copy of which was made available on Friday.

Advocates Dhruti Datar and Rajesh Datar for the appellants argued that the accident took place due to the rash and negligent driving of the ST bus driver, and eyewitness/passenger accounts clearly showed the bus was at excessive speed and rammed the motorcycle while overtaking.

Despite this, the lawyers argued, the Tribunal “erroneously observed that the deceased motorcyclist was also negligent and therefore the accident must have occurred”.

The plea said the Tribunal wrongly found that the ST bus driver had signalled the deceased to not overtake due to an oncoming vehicle from the opposite direction, and that the motorcyclist ignored it and attempted to overtake in haste and met with an accident.

The MSRTC lawyer argued the motorcyclist had the last opportunity to avoid the crash, and therefore the principle of contributory negligence applied to him as held by MACT and the entire liability cannot rest solely on the bus driver or MSRTC. The lawyer also said the deceased’s disabled sister is not a legal representative under Section 166 of the MV Act.

Justice Ahuja, after perusing material on record, discarded the “completely baseless” version of the ST driver and observed the deceased man “cannot be held to be contributorily negligent”.

Relying on past Supreme Court judgments, the judge observed that the MV Act does not define “legal representative” and that it may not necessarily be a legal heir.

“Therefore, the MV Act calls for a liberal and wider interpretation to serve the real purpose underlying the enactment and fulfil its legislative intent. That to maintain the claim petition, it is sufficient for the claimant to establish loss of dependency,” Justice Ahuja observed.

The HC ordered MSRTC to pay enhanced compensation of Rs 6.89 lakh to the appellants and the deceased man’s sister along with interest at the rate of 9% per annum.