The court reaffirmed the principle of just compensation, allowing enhancement beyond the claimed amount, emphasizing the duty to assess fair compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act.

ORDER :

1. Being aggrieved with the judgment and award dated 13-7-2009 passed by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal Junagadh in M.A.C.P. No.492 of 1997, the appellant – insurance company has preferred this appeal under Section 173 of the MV Act.

2. The short facts of the case are that while deceased was going on his scooter No.GJ-3Q-9266 on Jetpur-Jungadh Road, at that time, driver of Truck No.GJ-1B-6941 came with full speed rashly and negligently on wrong side and dashed with the deceased who succumbed to the injuries. Therefore, the applicants, being dependents of the deceased, have preferred claim petition seeking compensation of Rs.7,45,000/- with interest and costs.

3. The tribunal after considering the oral as well as documentary evidence has held the opponents are jointly and severally liable to pay the compensation and awarded a compensation of Rs.8,58,600/- with interest at the rate of 9% P.A. from the date of filing of the petition till its realization which has given rise to this appeal.

4. Heard learned advocates appearing for the respective parties.

5. Learned advocate Mr.Meena for the insurance company would make two fold submissions. Firstly, he would submit that tribunal has wrongly assessed that the driver of the truck was fully negligent in causing the road accident. He would submit that since the issue of accident relates to head-on collusion, both the errant vehicles should be equally held responsible. Secondly, he would submit that learned tribunal has ignoring the evidence of income of the deceased taken higher side of income and thereby erroneously come to the conclusion. He would therefore submit that compensation would require to be recomputed.

5.1 By making above two submissions, learned Advocate Mr.Meena would submit to allow this appeal and reduce the amount of compensation granted by the learned tribunal.

6. Per contra, learned advocate Mr.Oza for the legal heirs of the deceased claimant would fairly submit and accept that merely Rs.200/- to Rs.300/- has been taken by the tribunal on higher side; however the learned tribunal has wrongly applied the multiplier of 15 instead of 16 considering the age of deceased between 30 to 35 years. He would submit that tribunal was so conservative in granting the compensation under the head of loss of consortium as there are three members left in the family. He would submit that the learned tribunal by taking hypothetical approach granted very meager amount at Rs.15,000/- which is required to be granted at Rs.48,400/- for each member as per decision in case of National Insurance Company Ltd. v. Pranay Sethi & Ors., [(2017) 16 SCC 680]. He would further submit that learned tribunal has granted very lower amount of compensation under the other non-pecuniary heads and therefore this Court may also enhance the same.

6.1 Mr.Oza, learned advocate for the org. claimant would further submit that this is a case where the compensation awarded by the tribunal is required to be enhanced by recalculating under the principle of just and fair compensation. He would further submit that though the claimants have not filed the cross objection or cross appeal for enhancement of the claim amount, looking to the computation of the income and other heads of granting compensation, this Court ought to have arrived at just, fair and equitable compensation and award the same.

6.2 Upon above submissions, learned advocate Mr.Oza submitted to dismiss the appeal however requested this Court to enhance the compensation.

7. Having heard the learned advocates appearing for the parties and given an