BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday enhanced compensation to Rs 21.86 lakh, from Rs 4.41 lakh awarded by the Motor Accidents Claim Tribunal to a minor girl from Belagavi, for disability due to injuries she suffered in an accident when she was seven years old. “Since the claimant is a minor female child of seven years at the time of the accident, it is rather difficult to anticipate how much she would have earned once she attained the age of earning.
This depends on various imponderables like her education, enterprise, attitude and general approach to life,” the court observed, while enhancing the compensation. Partly allowing the appeal filed by the girl seeking enhancement of compensation, Justice P Krishna Bhat turned down the contention of the counsel of The New India Assurance Company Limited, that it would be unjust and inappropriate to fix functional disability at 100%.
“In my considered opinion, accepting such a contention would reduce the approach of viewing a human being to that of a machine... Unfortunately, human life is not mathematics. It is something more complex. Stark reality is that for a person who has lost the proper use of some essential limbs in terms of their utility for earning purpose, it is over simplistic to say that he/she can earn some income by resorting to limb-wise arithmetic,” Justice Bhat said.
On October 24, 2006, the girl was walking by the side of the road when a goods vehicle being driven in a rash manner rammed her and dragged her for 20ft, causing grievous injuries. The Tribunal awarded only Rs 4.41 lakh, so she moved the HC. The court observed that the evidence and medical records are very bleak about her future prospects.
“The human body cannot be treated like an assemblage of its constituent parts. In other words, if medical evidence is clinching on the aspect that minor child cannot straighten one of her lower limbs and one of her upper limbs and has lost its use, it is as good as the human body becoming useless, so far as the person’s ability to work and earn a livelihood is concerned,” the court added.