Judgment

ORDER:- An explosive escalation of automobile accidents, accounting for more deaths than the most deadly diseases, has become a lethal phenomenon on Indian Roads everywhere. The jural impact of this tragic development on our legistlatures, courts and law enforcing agencies is insufficient, with the result that the poor, who are, by and large, the casualty in most of these cases, suffer loss of life or limb and are deprived of expeditious legal remedies in the shape of reasonably quantified compansation promptly paid and this, even after compulsory motor insurance and nationalisation of insurance business. The facts of these special leaves petitions which we dismiss by this order, raise two serious issues which constrain us to make a speaking order. The first deals with legal rights, literacy in the case of automobile accidents and the processual modalities which secure redressal of grievances. The second relates to the consequences of negligence of counsel which misleads a litigant into delayed pursuit of his remedy.

2. Medieval roads with treacherous dangers and total disrepair, explosive increase of heavy vehicles often terribly overloaded and without cautionary signals, reckless drivers crazy with speed and tipsy with spirituous potoins, non-enforcement of traffic regulations designed for safety but offering opportunities for systematised corruption and little else and, as a cumulative effect, mounting highway accidents demand a new dimension to the law of torts through no fault liability and processual celerity and simplicity in compensation claims cases. Social justice, the command of the Constitution is being violated by the State itself by neglecting road repairs, ignoring deadly overloads and contesting liability after nationalising the bulk of bus transport and the whole of general insurance business. The jurisprudence of compensation for motor accidents must develop in the direction of nofault liability and the determination of the quantum must be liberal not niggardly since the law values life and limb in free country in generous scales. In the present case, a doctor and his brother riding a motor cycle were hit, by a jeep driver and both were killed. The fatal event occurred in November 1971 but the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal delivered judgement five years later awarding sums of Rs. 80, 000/- and Rs. 73, 500/- to the two sets of claimants.

3. The delay of five years in such cases is a terrible commentary on the judicial process. If only no-fault liability, automatic reporting by the police who investigate the accident in a statutory pro forma signed by the claimants and forward to the tribunal as in Tamil Nadu and decentralised empowerment of such tribunals in every district coupled with informal procedures and liberation from court-fees and the sophisticated rules of evidence and burden of proof were introduced-easy and inexpensive if the State has the will to help the poor who mostly die in such accidents-laws delays in this compassionate jurisdiction can be banished. Social justice in action is the measure of the States constitutional sensitivity. Anyway, we have made these observations hopefully to help focus the attention of the Union and the States.

4. The nationalised insurance company appealed to the High Court against the award. We have no doubt that the finding on both the culpability and the quantum as rendered by the trial court are correct. But the High Court dismissed the appeal on the ground of delay, dismissing the application of the petitioner for condonation under Section 5 of the Limitation Act.

5. The Accident Claims Tribunal pronounced its award on September, 15, 1976, after making the necessary computations and deductions. The appeal had to be filed on or before January 19, 1977 but was actually filed 30 days later. Counsel for the petitioner is stated to have made the mistake in the calculation of the period of limitation. He had intimated the parties accordingly with the result that