Claim of compensation for loss of one leg.

This appeal is directed against the decree and judgment of the learned Subordinate Judge of Coimbatore in O.S. No. 24 of 1952.

The plaintiff is the son of a carpenter who has studied upto the fourth class. His elder brother is a cleaner earning Rs. 30 a month. The plaintiff also wanted to become a fitter and the selling of ice-fruit by him was apparently only a temporary job till the plaintiff reached sufficient age to join the St. Michael’s Workshop to learn the fitter’s job. In these circumstances on the date of the occurrence, viz., 10 a.m. on 16th July, 1950, the plaintiff after returning from Church was sitting on the culvert near the main gate of the Forest College with one of his legs folded and resting on it and his other leg hanging down. Then a bus bearing MDC.3967 belonging to the Arthur Hope’s College of Technology, now known as the Government College of Technology, crossed this culvert near the main gate of the Forest College, Coimbatore. There is no dispute that this bus was driven so rashly and negligently that it dashed against the culvert and hit the plaintiff’s left leg, which was hanging down, and severed it below the knee, thereby causing the plaintiff very serious injuries. The plaintiff fell down unconscious after the incident and he was taken to the Government Headquarters Hospital, Coimbatore, where he was treated as an inpatient for a period of 35 days. At the Hospital his left leg below the knee has been amputated and he is now moving about with crutches with difficulty. The Government bus-driver charged under section 338, Indian Penal Code, was convicted and sentenced to six months’ rigorous imprisonment.

In these circumstances, the plaintiff on the foot that he had become permanently incapacitated and that he is unable to go about his normal business, and much less to do any work, and that this was due to the rash and negligent driving of the bus by the second defendant, a servant of the first defendant, in the course of his employment as such servant, filed the suit, out of which this appeal arises, in the pauper forum for recovery of Rs. 23,180 from the defendant by way of damages.

The contentions of the defendants are reflected from the following issues framed in the case, viz.,

(1) Was the plaintiff guilty of contributory negligence?

(2) What is the correct amount of compensation payable to the plaintiff?

The learned Subordinate Judge found that the plaintiff was not guilty of contributory negligence and that a sum of Rs. 10,000 would be the correct amount of compensation payable to the plaintiff. The State of Madras has appealed against this decree and judgment on the foot that the amount of compensation awarded by the learned Subordinate judge erred on the side of being excessive and disproportionate to the damages caused to the plaintiff in this case.

The principles regulating damages for personal injuries can be gathered from the standard treatises on the subject and concerning which the case-law in this country is thoroughly sparse.

The following passage from Mayne’s Treatise on Damages, Eleventh Edition, at page 485, under the heading “compensation for personal injury” is apposite;

“Very little can be said with certainty as to damages for personal injuries inflicted by negligence, loss of time during the cure, and expense incurred in respect of it, are of course matters of easy calculation. Pain and suffering undergone by the plaintiff are also a ground of damages. Any permanent injury, especially when it causes a disability from future exertion, and consequent pecuniary loss, is also a ground of damage. This is one of the cases in which damages most signally fail to be a real compensation for the loss sustained. In one case Parke, B., said, ‘It would be most unjust, if, whenever any accident occurs, juries were to visit the unfortunate cause of it with the utmost amount which they think an equivalent for the mischief done. Scarcely any sum could compensate a labouring man for the los