Car owner liable to pay crash damages if hired driverhas no licence: HC
TIMES NEWS NETWORK 24.03.2025
Bhopal/Jabalpur : The MP High Court has said that if a driver hired by a person doesn’t have a valid driving licence and dies in an accident, the person hiring him would be liable to pay compensation to his kin rather than the insurance company with which the vehicle is insured. The court ordered the insurance company to pay the compensation awarded to the family of the deceased driver by the labour court for now and subsequently recover it from the owner of the vehicle.
The insurance company in its petition challenged the compensation awarded to the wife of the deceased driver. During the hearing, the court of Justice Vivek Agarwal asked the owner of the vehicle, Srikant Singh, who hired the deceased Shiv Kumar Rawat as a driver, to produce a copy of his driving licence before the court, which he failed to do. The court said that in accident claim cases, it’s for the insurance company to prove that the terms and conditions of the insurance policy have been violated.
In this case, the person who hired deceased Rawat as a driver couldn’t produce a copy of his driving licence to show that he was legally entitled to drive a vehicle. In this situation, the insurance company was not liable to pay the compensation but the owner of the vehicle himself. Rawat died when the vehicle overturned while it was on the move. The court, while upholding the Labour Court, Rewa, order to award compensation to the wife of the deceased driver, asked the insurance company to pay the compensation and recover it from the owner of the vehicle. Advocate Rajesh Kumar Jain appeared on behalf of the petitioner.
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