Karnataka High Court: While delivering the judgment in a miscellaneous first appeal filed under Section 173(1) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, a Single Judge Bench of Raghvendra S. Chauhan, J. set aside the impugned judgment and award passed by the IInd Additional District and Sessions Judge whereby he directed the appellant to pay compensation of Rs. 75,000 to the respondent.
The respondent-claimant was engaged in business of transporting good. On the date of incident they were transporting 15 KVA DG set in a Canter Tempo which was hit by a KSRTC bus, which caused damage to the said goods. The respondent-claimant paid Rs. 75,000 for the repair of the said goods and hence claimed compensation of the same amount from the appellant-insurance company.
The appellant-insurance company raised a preliminary objection of maintainability of the claim petition contending that the claimant was not the owner of goods and under Section 166 of the MV Act, only the owner of the goods was entitled to claim compensation.
The High Court after perusing the impugned award and Section 166 of the MV Act held that according to Section 166(1)(b) of the Act, it is only the owner of the property who is entitled to file the application for compensation. A transporter is a mere agent of the owner of the goods. Therefore the respondent-claimant could not have filed the petition for compensation under S. 166 of the Act. Accordingly, the claim petition filed by the respondent was held not maintainable. The appeal was allowed and the impugned order was set aside. [The Manager, The Oriental Insurance Company Limited v. M/s Rao and Brothers, Miscellaneous First Appeal No. 6042 of 2014 (MV), dated August 18, 2017]
