Rajasthan High Court: P.K. Lohra J., in an appeal under Section 173 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 upheld the decision of the impugned judgment and directed the insurer to first pay the compensation amount to the claimants and then recover from the insured.
In the present case, the appellants being Megma HDI General Insurance Company Limited had appealed before the High Court challenging the judgment and award passed by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Jodhpur. The Tribunal had absolved the appellants herein from the liability to pay compensation to the claimants and the onus was on the owner of the vehicle. However, it had directed the appellants to pay the compensation to the claimants first and thereafter claim the amount from the owner of the vehicle, the insured.
Challenging this above order, the counsel representing the appellants, Dhanpat Choudhary, placed reliance on the Supreme Court judgment National Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Swaran Singh, (2004) 3 SCC 297 and submitted that the tribunal erred in ordering the appellants to first pay the compensation to the claimants and thereafter recover it from the insured party.
The High Court, after perusal of the Tribunal’s order, referred to the Supreme Court judgments in Pappu v. Vinod Kumar Lamba, (2018) 3 SCC 208 and Amrit Paul Singh v. Tata AIG General Insurance Co. Ltd., (2018) 7 SCC 558 wherein it was held that in case of any loss to the third party, the insurer is first required to pay compensation to the claimants and then recover the same from insured. It stated that the Tribunal had absolved the appellants from the duty due to the insured party not complying with the insurance policy but in order to mitigate the hardship of the claimants, the Tribunal directed the appellants to recover the compensation amount from the insured after paying the same to the claimants. The appeal was dismissed.[Megma Hdi General Ins. Co. Ltd. v. Likhama Ram, 2019 SCC OnLine Raj 1292, decided on 05-07-2019]
