The proximate cause of death must be established to attribute liability in cases involving accidents.

K. Kannan, J.

The appeal is by the insurer challenging the finding attributed to death of Ram Kumar as resultant to the use of motor vehicle. The incident alleged was on 21.05.2010. The deceased was travelling in a rickshaw, with his brother following him by bicycle. The insured's vehicle which was a car was reported to have dashed against the rickshaw from behind when the deceased fell down from the vehicle. He had bruised himself and he was reported to have been taken home. He did not get admitted till the next day at 9.30 pm at the hospital where he died and the cause of death as entered in the hospital records was "Broncho-pneumonia, coronary artery disease in case of pre-existing liver cirrhosis". A copy of the record prepared by Rajiv Aggarwal was Ex.P.14. The Doctor who was at the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, GMCH, Sector 32, Chandigarh was examined as DW4 who spoke from the hospital records to say that it was a known case of chronic heart disease and alcoholic liver disease. The death report P3 entered in Column 16 the cause of death as alcoholic liver disease with hepatic encephalopathy with shock. The Doctor had explained that shock is the ultimate event that precipitated death. The Doctor further explained at the trial that the patient died a natural death and as per the records, the death had no relation with the alleged accidental injuries. Indeed, there were no visible injuries noted in the death certificate. With all this evidence, which must have been treated as admission against the claimants, the Tribunal still found that the accident was on account of the injury suffered in an accident that had taken place on 21.05.2010.

2. It is admittedly a situation where the deceased was not taken to the hospital immediately after the accident. The counsel for the claimant would explain that he had fixed his daughter's marriage and he did not want to be seen getting admitted in a hospital. He was anxious to avoid getting admitted in the hospital not because the injuries were slight but because he did not want to sully the preparations for conduct of marriage. I will take this to be an explanation possible but this explanation cannot still take us to make an inference to be made that an accident was in any way responsible for the death. The counsel for the respondent would refer to the decisions of this Court in National Insurance Company Limited v. Pooja Verma, 2010 Legal Eagle (P&H) 2990, that applies the principle that if the person died soon after injuries in an accident, with no other intervening event, it must only be taken that the accident alone is the proximate cause for death. The theory in tort called as the talem qualem rule had been applied. Yet another judgment in Kiran Bala and others and others v. Rajeev Sharma, 2013 Legal Eagle (P&H) 355, where the accident victim suffered dislocation of the hip which was sought to be corrected through a surgery, when he died. He was already a diabetic patient and the Court held that the death was resultant to the accident.

3. I cannot apply these two decisions to the favor of the claimant only because in Pooja verma's case (supra) there was no intervening incident between the accident and death and the person was not previously suffering from any other ailment. In Kiran Bala's case (supra) it was the accident injury that required surgery which failed. In both the cases, the application of talem qualem was perfectly justified. In every case of accident, we still look to the proximate cause of death. If there was any evidence that the deceased who had a cirrhosis of the liver could not have died in the usual course but he died only because he had an accident and the immediate proximate cause was the accident, then there was surely a scope for addressing the claim as resultant to the accident injury. On the other hand, it was a case where the deceased did not even feel compelled to get admitted in the hospital. Some abrasions not even an abrasion w