Supreme Court – Married daughters entitled to insurance, says Karnataka High Court

Karnataka High Court has held that married daughters are entitled to compensation from insurance firms for the lack of their mother and father in accidents.

The excessive courtroom stated the Supreme Court had held that married sons are additionally entitled to compensation in such instances.

“This court also cannot make any discrimination whether they are married sons or married daughters and hence, the very contention that married daughters of the deceased are not entitled to compensation cannot be accepted,” the excessive courtroom stated.

The single-judge bench of Justice H.P. Sandesh heard an attraction filed by an insurance firm difficult the award of compensation to the married daughters of Renuka, 57, who was killed in an accident on April 12, 2012, close to Yamanur, Hubballi, in north Karnataka.

Renuka’s husband, three daughters and a son had sought compensation. The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal had awarded a compensation of Rs 5,91,600 with 6 per cent annual curiosity to the relations.

The insurance firm had challenged this within the excessive courtroom, contending that married daughters couldn’t declare compensation, and likewise that they weren’t dependents. Therefore, awarding compensation beneath the pinnacle of “loss of dependency” was unsuitable, the corporate had stated.

The insurer additionally claimed that compensation was to be awarded solely beneath “loss of estate”.

The courtroom stated dependency doesn’t solely imply monetary dependency.

Even if dependency is a related criterion to say compensation for lack of dependency, “it does not mean financial dependency is the ‘ark of the covenant’,” the courtroom stated.

Dependency consists of gratuitous service dependency, bodily dependency, emotional dependency and psychological dependency, which may by no means be equated when it comes to cash, it stated.

Other contentions of the insurance firm together with doubts concerning the age of the deceased and her earnings had been additionally rejected by the courtroom. A guaranty card for a stitching machine bought by the deceased got here in helpful for the tribunal to calculate her earnings at Rs 4,500 monthly.

The courtroom rejected the competition of the insurer that exorbitant compensation had been awarded by the tribunal and dismissed its attraction.