Supreme Court - Daily Orders
National Insurance Co. Ltd vs Pranay Sethi on 9 September, 2014
Bench: M.Y. Eqbal, Pinaki Chandra Ghose
1
ITEM NO.1 COURT NO.12 SECTION IVB
S U P R E M E C O U R T O F I N D I A
RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (C)......CC No(s).
22869/2013
(Arising out of impugned final judgment and order dated 30/05/2013
in FAO No. 5011/2011 passed by the High Court Of Punjab & Haryana
At Chandigarh)
NATIONAL INSURANCE CO. LTD Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
PRANAY SETHI & ORS Respondent(s)
I.A. No. 1/2013(with c/delay in filing SLP and office report)
Date : 09/09/2014 This application was called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE M.Y. EQBAL
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE PINAKI CHANDRA GHOSE
For Petitioner(s)
Dr. Meera Agarwal,Adv.
For Respondent(s)
UPON hearing the counsel the Court made the following
O R D E R
Delay condoned.
Issue notice.
The petitioner – National Insurance Company Limited assailed the judgment passed by the High Court reversing the judgment Signature Not Verified passed by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal and Digitally signed by Sukhbir Paul Kaur awarded a sum of Rs.10,82,843/-.
Date: 2014.09.11 17:21:58 IST Learned counsel appearing for Reason:
the petitioner confined her submission on the issue with regard to application of future prospect applied by the High Court. 2 In this connection, learned counsel has placed before us an Order dated 2.7.2014 passed by this Court in Special Leave Petition(C) No. 16735 of 2014 (arising out of CC No. 8058 of 2014) titled “National Insurance Company Limited versus Pushpa and others”, whereby the issue has been referred to the larger Bench to decide as to whether the principles of future prospects will apply to private employment also.
It is a case where a youngman aged 30 years of age, who was running his own company died at the threshold of his carrier while his car met with an accident because of bursting of tyre. The car flipped to the other side of the median and it collided with the truck. Although it is the case of claimant that because of the high speed of the truck and gross negligence of the driver of the truck, such a severe accident took place but the driver of the truck wasnot examined. The High Court, therefore, apportioned the liability between the truck and the car as 75% and 25% of the total compensation determined.
We are of the opinion that the High Court has taken a very lenient view in applying the apportionment and passing the liability on the petitioner-Insurance Company only to the extent of 25%. It is well settled that in case of collision between the heavy vehicle and the light vehicle, the maximum liability always goes to the heavy vehicle.
Be that as it may, learned counsel for the petitioner referred the order aforesaid and insisted to refer the matter to the larger Bench only on the question of application of 3 future prospect.
Admittedly, no amount has been paid by the petitioner to the victims of the accident. We, therefore, direct the petitioner to deposit the aforesaid amount of Rs.10,82,843/- with the Claims Tribunal within six weeks. Needless to say that the claimant shall be entitled to withdraw the aforesaid amount without any security or surety.
Let this matter be tagged with Special Leave Petition(C) No. 16735 of 2014 arising out of CC No. 8058 of 2014.
A copy of this order be sent to the respondents.
(Sukhbir Paul Kaur) (Sneh Lata Sharma)
Court Master Court Master