Madras High Court backs housewife, enhances aid

Chennai: While estimating the 'services' of the housewife, a narrow meaning should not be given to the meaning of the word 'services' but it should be construed broadly. One has to take into account the loss of 'personal care and attention' by the victim to her children, as a mother and to her husband, as a wife, said the Madras high court while enhancing compensation from Rs 13.55 lakh to 31.20 lakh awarded to a 35-year-old woman whose legs were amputated following a road accident.

Dhanalakshmi (35), a tuition teacher earning Rs 6,000 per month, suffered amputation of both legs below the knees in an accident in 2011, involving a Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation bus at Erode. She is a widow with a 11-year-old daughter studying in class 6. Allowing an appeal from Dhanalakshmi and finding fault with the tribunal fixing a notional income instead of real income for arriving at the compensation amount, Justice S.Vimala said, "It is pertinent for tribunals to consider the invaluable, intangible services rendered by the home maker, while assessing damages on account of the loss of limb/disability suffered by her. In the instant case, Dhanalakshmi in her prime youth has been destined to live without the use of her legs."

The services rendered by the injured to the family were both tangible and intangible. Calculation of these services in terms of money is very difficult, as provision has to be made for her own life, apart from that of her child, the judge added. The judge said that this ambitious woman was now doomed to be a torso without both her lower limbs, the judge added and applying the multiplier method, enhanced the compensation to Rs 31.20 lakh.