Compensation reduced for accident victim kin

Chennai: Applying the split multiplier principle, Madras high court reduced from Rs 11.55 lakh to Rs 9.05 lakh, the compensation awarded to the family of the deceased assistant admi­nistrative officer (AAO), who died at the age of 57 in a road accident at Krishnagiri in 2008.

A division bench comprising Justices R Sudhakar and Pushpa Sathyanarayana allowed the appeal filed by the National Insurance Com­p­any challenging the aw­ard dated July 2, 2012 pas­sed by the Motor Acc­idents Claims Trib­unal, Kri­shnagiri.

On July 8, 2008 while the deceased Murugesan, who was employed as an AAO in Agriculture department, was proceeding in his TVS 50 in Krishnagiri-Hosur Road a private bus, insured with NIC, came at high speed and dashed against Murugesan who died on the spot.

His wife, three sons and mother claimed compensation stating that the deceased was earning Rs 17,529 per month at the time of the accident and the Tribunal awarded Rs 11.55 lakh to them. Contending that the compensation was excessive, the insurance company filed the appeal.

R Sreevidhya, counsel for the appellant contended that when the deceased was employed in a government service where the retirement age was 58 and when the deceased was 57 years on the date of accident, the Tribunal ought to have adopted the split multiplier principle and the multiplier eight adopted by the Tribunal blindly without following the guidelines, was unsustainable, she added.
Writing the judgment for the Bench, Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana said on the date of accident, the deceased was 57 years.

Although normally the eight-multiplier would be applied in computing the loss of dependency, in this case, the same cannot be done as the income of the deceased will not be the same from the date of retirement.

Had the deceased Murugesan been alive, after the age of superannuation, he would get only half the salary as pension. Therefore, it was an exception case where the split multiplier has to be adopted i.e., 1 + 7 = 8.

As there was no scope for evidence about the prospect of future increment of the deceased and since the earning would be reduced to 50 percent after retirement, the multiplier of 8 as adopted by the Tribunal cannot be sustained.

Hence, this court feels that split multiplier can be adopted and as such, after superannuation, 7 multiplier would apply, the bench added and while applying the split multiplier, it however enhanced the consortium and arrived the compensation at Rs 9,05 lakh.