KARACHI, Dec 23: The Sindh High Court asked the Sindh Road Transport Corporation on Friday to pay Rs 3.7 million to a widow and her children as damages for an army major’s death in an accident.
Ms Feroza Wajid submitted through Advocate Nasir Maqsood that she, her husband Maj Wajid Hassan, and their two minor children were travelling from Hyderabad to Karachi in a car when it was hit by a rashly-driven SRTC bus near Toll Plaza in October 1989. The car was destroyed, her husband was killed on the spot and she and her children suffered injuries.
The SRTC, the provincial government and the bus driver, the plaintiff said, were jointly severally liable to pay her and her children Rs 7.88 million as damages under the Fatal Accidents Act for the financial and other losses suffered by them.
Holding the defendants liable, Justice Khlji Arif Hussain decreed the suit in the amount of Rs 3.7 million together with mark-up from the date of decree till the date of payment.
APPEAL ADMITTED: A division bench, comprising Justices Mushir Alam and Syed Zawwar Hussain Jaffery, meanwhile, admitted an appeal moved by Advocate Syed Sami Ahmed through Advocate Nasir Maqsood against the dismissal of his suit for the death of his son, Syed Wali Ahmed, an engineer in the Pakistan Steel Mills in 1984.
The appellant submitted that the single judge who dismissed his suit failed to appreciate that his son was duty-bound to accompany his Soviet supervisor to mills’ drying and quenching plant and that he did not visit the plant voluntarily and without reason. The PSM management was legally obliged to keep the plant free of fumes at all reasonable times but it failed in its duty. Engineer Syed Wali and the Soviet supervisor, Sidrin Sacha, were killed instantaneously as a result of the management’s negligence.
The plaintiff lawyer prayed that the impugned judgment be set aside and his suit for damages amounting to Rs7.68 million be decreed.
