MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has held that dependents who are not legal heirs of a road accident victim are entitled to compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act if they are able to establish their loss of dependency before accident claims tribunals.
Justice R Vijayakumar, who passed the order, said dependency is the criteria to award accident compensation and mere status of ‘legal heir’ alone is not sufficient to make a claim. If a legal heir is not a dependant of the deceased, he or she is not entitled to receive compensation for loss of dependency, he added.
The judge said that the Motor Vehicles Act “calls for a liberal and wider interpretation to serve the real purpose. Hence, every legal heir who suffered on account of death of a person in a motor vehicle accident should have a remedy for realisation of the compensation. A legal representative may include any person who intermeddles with the estate of the deceased and therefore, such a person does not necessarily have to be a legal heir.”
He also cited some judgments passed by the Supreme Court and the Madras High Court, which indicated that the right to file a claim is not restricted to the legal heirs like wife, parents and children alone.
The judge observed it while hearing an appeal filed by a Saritha (name changed) against the payment of road accident compensation to the second wife of her husband, who died in an accident in Madurai in 2010.
Saritha and her children approached the court as the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal of Madurai granted compensation to both wives and the second wife’s child while leaving out her own children.
Noting that the deceased was living with his second wife and son at the time of the accident and the second wife was travelling in the two-wheeler and sustained injuries, the judge opined that though the second wife cannot be considered to be a legal representative under the Hindu Succession Act, certainly she is a dependent.