Motor accident compensation for legal representatives includes major earning children, with future prospects and conventional heads added.

Legal representatives of a deceased victim, including major married and earning children, are entitled to seek compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act without being excluded on the ground of dependency alone. The compensation assessment was also revised to reflect just compensation by adding future prospects to the proven income and by including permissible conventional heads such as filial consortium, loss of estate, and funeral expenses, with the reassessed award sustained with interest and joint and several liability in favour of the claimants.

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Issues: (i) Whether major married and earning children of the deceased, as legal representatives, can seek compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act irrespective of their dependency on the deceased. (ii) Whether the compensation required re-computation by adding future prospects and conventional heads such as filial consortium, loss of estate, and funeral expenses.

Issue (i): Whether major married and earning children of the deceased, as legal representatives, can seek compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act irrespective of their dependency on the deceased.

Analysis: The legal position was treated as settled that the legal representatives of a deceased victim have a right to apply for compensation. The Court preferred the later exposition that major married and earning sons and daughters, if they are legal representatives, are not excluded merely because they were earning or residing separately. The earlier view treating independent siblings as non-dependents was held not to govern the present controversy in the face of the subsequent reaffirmation of the broader entitlement to apply for compensation.

Conclusion: The right to apply for compensation was held to be available to the major married and earning children as legal representatives, irrespective of dependency status.

Issue (ii): Whether the compensation required re-computation by adding future prospects and conventional heads such as filial consortium, loss of estate, and funeral expenses.

Analysis: The Tribunal had computed compensation on the basis of the then-applicable multiplier method but had not taken future prospects into account. The Court applied the principles governing fair compensation and added future prospects to the proven income, then applied the appropriate multiplier and deductions. It further added filial consortium for the two claimants and amounts under loss of estate and funeral expenses, thereby reassessing the compensation on a fuller and more just basis.

Conclusion: The compensation was re-determined upwards by including future prospects and the permissible conventional heads.

Final Conclusion: The challenge to the award failed and the reassessed compensation, with interest and joint and several liability, was sustained in favour of the claimants.

Ratio Decidendi: Legal representatives of a deceased victim, including major married and earning children, are entitled to seek compensation, and just compensation must be assessed by including future prospects and appropriate conventional heads wherever applicable.

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