FAO No.944 of 1995 -1- IN THE HIGH COURT FOR THE STATES OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH FAO No.944 of 1995 Date of Decision. 16.08.2010 2. FAO No.945 of 1995 Oriental Insurance Company Ltd., SCO No.5, Sector 17-D, Chandigarh through its Manager ......Appellant Versus Menu Dev son of Karan Singh and others ......Respondents Present: Mr. Vinod Chaudhary, Advocate for the appellant. None for respondent Nos.1 to 9. Mr. Ravinder Arora, Advocate for respondent No.10. CORAM:HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not ? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? -.- K. KANNAN J.(ORAL) 1. Both the appeals are at the instance of the insurance company, which was the insurer for a truck that was involved in an accident by collision with a mini bus which had been insured with New India Assurance Company Limited. The claimants were passengers in the mini bus, who had attributed negligence only to the truck. It appears that there were five other claims, which had been filed and adjudicated about the same problem where the respective owners and insurers of both the vehicles had been added. At a joint trial, the Tribunal held the owners of both the vehicles as FAO No.944 of 1995 -2- responsible for the accident and provided for apportionment of liability to the tune of 50% in both the cases. In respect of these cases, the claimants had chosen to file the case only against the owner and the insurer of the truck and they had not impleaded the owner of the mini bus or the insurer. 2. To a plea by an insurer that the claim was bad for non- joinder of necessary parties, namely, of the owner and insurer of the mini bus in which the claimants were travelling, the Tribunal held that in a case of composite negligence, it shall be open for the claimants to make any one of the joint tort feasors as party and it shall be perfectly legitimate for a Court to adjudicate such a claim. The reasoning of the Tribunal accords with law as laid down by several decisions and it is unexceptional that a claimant shall have the right worked out against any one of the joint tort feasors, if such a joint and severe liability has been found in other batch of cases. The award of the Tribunal itself is not erroneous in any way, for the insurance company did no more than taking an objection at the trial and has sought to implead the owner of the mini bus and the insurer as parties only in appeal before this Court. The said application is resisted by the insurer, who is sought to be impleaded on the ground that he was himself not impleaded as a party and a mere statement in defence that the other persons should have been also impleaded was no ground for impleadment presently. 3. I do not think a case must suffer any impediment now by impleadment of a party, for, that would require an opportunity to an insurer to file its own objections and scope for further evidence. If FAO No.944 of 1995 -3- the point of law was correctly addressed by the Tribunal to a claim against any one of the joint tort feasors, the award need not require any intervention and the appeal would require to be dismissed. The only modification that I can provide for in the appeal for the insurer is that it shall be open for the insurer to satisfy the claim and seek for contribution in an independent action against the owner or insurer and the starting point of law of limitation will be the time when such a liability is made finally through the order of this Court while disposing of this appeal. 4. Subject to this observation, both the appeals are dismissed. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE August 16, 2010 Pankaj