On 2 January 2025, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that where the State takes possession of land but pays no compensation for the better part of two decades, the prolonged deprivation violates Article 300A — and that although a Special Land Acquisition Officer cannot on his own shift the statutory date for fixing market value, a constitutional court under Articles 32, 226 or 142 may, in exceptional cases of inordinate State delay, direct that market value be reckoned as of a later date. On the facts, the Court fixed the value as on 22 April 2019. A digest of the holding and its place in the Article 300A line.
A branch falling from an old roadside tree onto a sheltering autorickshaw was an unforeseeable Act of God, and the injury did not arise from the vehicle's 'use' in the proximate sense Section 166 requires — yet the Supreme Court still enhanced compensation under Article 142.
The Supreme Court settled a long-inconsistent question of motor accident law — which years' Income Tax Returns fix a deceased's annual income under Section 166 — by bifurcating the rule for salaried and self-employed claimants.
The Supreme Court enhanced a carpenter's motor-accident compensation to ₹35,95,923, holding that a skilled artisan's notional income cannot be pegged to minimum wages, that functional disability (100%) — not the 70% medical figure — governs loss of earning capacity, and that future prosthetic-limb costs must be quantified over the injured's lifetime.
On 19 September 2019, a two-judge bench held Section 3-J of the National Highways Act, 1956 unconstitutional to the extent it denied solatium and interest available under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 — restoring those benefits to landowners whose land was acquired for national highways between 1997 and 2015, and harmonising the highways regime with the 1894 Act and the 2013 Act.
The Supreme Court affirmed that a hospital is vicariously liable for the negligence of the doctors and staff it employs, upholding the NCDRC's finding of negligence in the death of a 27-year-old patient. It modified only the quantum, reducing the hospital's share of compensation from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.
On 6 February 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Manmohan and Rajesh Bindal upheld the finding of deficiency in service against the salon at ITC Maurya but set aside the NCDRC's ₹2 crore award, holding that a crore-rupee compensation claim cannot rest on presumptions, conjecture or unproved loss of earnings. The Court restricted the compensation to ₹25 lakh — the amount already released to the complainant. A digest of the holding and the principles for quantifying consumer compensation.
The Supreme Court, following Reliance General Insurance v. Shashi Sharma, held that compassionate financial assistance under the Haryana Rules of 2006 — which replicates the deceased employee's pay and wages — must be deducted from the loss-of-income component of a Motor Vehicles Act dependency award, because allowing both would be an impermissible double benefit. Genuinely collateral receipts such as life insurance and family pension remain non-deductible under Helen C. Rebello.
The Supreme Court issued continuing-mandamus directions to make the Compensation of Victims of Hit and Run Motor Accidents Scheme, 2022 actually reach claimants — police must inform victims, file the First Accident Report, and route unfiled cases to legal-aid authorities. The Court also told the Centre to consider raising the ₹2 lakh and ₹50,000 caps.
The Supreme Court used a fatal bus-accident claim to bring order to motor-accident compensation, fixing an age-based multiplier table and standard slabs for deducting the deceased's personal and living expenses. The framework became the bedrock of MACT computation, later affirmed by the Constitution Bench in Pranay Sethi.
The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission found a surgeon guilty of gross medical negligence for removing a patient's healthy left kidney instead of her diseased right one, awarding the family a total of approximately ₹2 crore.
In February 2026 a single judge of the Madras High Court, hearing a criminal revision arising from the financing of the Rajinikanth film Kochadaiyaan, affirmed a Section 138 conviction yet moulded the relief into a monetary direction rather than imprisonment. A digest of the facts, the compensatory characterisation of cheque-bounce law, and what it means for sentencing under the Negotiable Instruments Act.
The Supreme Court strikes down a Bihar statute that vested a 1924 heritage library in the State at one-rupee compensation as manifestly arbitrary under Art. 14.
The 1993 ruling that made compensation for custodial death under Articles 32 and 226 a public-law remedy, distinct from tort and immune to sovereign immunity.
The 1983 decision in which the Supreme Court first awarded monetary compensation under Article 32 for breach of Article 21 — the birth of constitutional-tort jurisprudence in India.
The Supreme Court creates a distinct 'Loss of Domestic Care' head of motor-accident compensation and values a homemaker's monthly contribution at ₹30,000.
Decided on 25 March 1998, this judgment held that both the person who hires a medical service and the beneficiary of it are 'consumers', allowing distinct awards to an injured child and to its parents arising from a single act of negligence.
On 17 March 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Prasanna B. Varale held that amounts received by the dependants of the deceased under employer-provided group insurance — or under other contractual or social-security benefits — cannot be treated as 'pecuniary advantages' liable to be deducted from compensation awarded under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. The judgment affirms the prior doctrinal line that advantages accruing from contracts performed during the deceased's lifetime are not outcomes of the death itself, and produces a working frame for the just-compensation architecture in motor-accident claims.