Date:01/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/01/stories/2008080161360600.htm

Tamil Nadu - Madurai

Bench stretches law for conductor

Staff Reporter

MADURAI: Cases filed by the hapless must be judged with a standard of fairness which is a little different from the cases of business barons or those of corporate magnets, the First Bench comprising Chief Justice A.K. Ganguly and Justice Prabha Sridevan of the Madras High Court said recently.

Allowing a writ appeal filed in the Madurai Bench by a person who was denied the job of a Government bus conductor owing to a minor deformity in his hip, the Judges said: “In the cases of persons who are lowly placed, the courts have a duty to stretch the law as far as possible, without violating it, to give relief to those persons.”

True to their words, Justice M. Venugopal on Thursday said that an insurance company could not deny relief under the Workmen’s Compensation Act to a private bus conductor who described himself as a mechanic in the claim petition because the vehicle ran over him while he was changing one of the front tyres.

The insurance company had contended that only a driver/conductor and not a mechanic were covered under the policy issued by it.

To this, the Judge said: “There is nothing wrong in the first respondent describing himself as a mechanic in the claim petition since he was attending repairing works which even otherwise falls within the term ‘maintenance’ found in Schedule II of the Act.”

On the eligibility of the claimant to the relief under the Act, the Judge said a person must prove the existence of a master-servant relationship with his employers.

English judgement

He recalled an English judgement in Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart vs. Slatford (1952) wherein it was observed that the test of being a servant did not rest on submissions to orders. It depended on whether the person was part and parcel of the organisation.

Further, in United States vs. Silk (1947), the Supreme Court of USA held that the test to be applied was not that of power control, but whether the men were employees as a matter of economic reality.

The claimant in the present case satisfied these requirements and hence he was entitled for compensation, Mr. Justice Venugopal added.