On 31 October 2017, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously settled the methodology for computing 'just compensation' under the Motor Vehicles Act 1988. Authored by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, the judgment fixed the future-prospects framework on bright-line age and employment-status tiers, affirmed the Sarla Verma multiplier line, standardised the conventional heads with a built-in 10 per cent revision every three years, and brought a long period of MACT inconsistency to a close.
On 5 January 2004, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (V.N. Khare CJI, S.B. Sinha J. authoring, and S.H. Kapadia J.) settled the 'pay and recover' doctrine for motor accident claims involving a driver without a valid licence. The bench held that third-party statutory liability under Section 149 of the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 persists even where the driver had no licence at the time of the accident; that the insurer must pay the third party first and may then recover from the insured under the breach-of-policy condition; that the burden lies on the insurer to prove deliberate breach as a precondition to recovery; and that the owner's contractual liability to the insurer is analytically separate from the insurer's statutory liability to the third party. The judgment installed the victim-protection architecture that runs through every subsequent motor accident decision.
On 19 August 1999, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court (Saghir Ahmad and R.P. Sethi JJ.) held that motor-insurance contracts must be strictly construed; that statutory permit conditions under the Motor Vehicles Act 1988 are read into the insurance contract where the policy expressly so provides; and that carriage of hazardous goods on a permit limited to 'unhazardous goods' takes the loss outside the scope of cover. The District Forum's dismissal of the insured's consumer complaint was restored; the State Commission and NCDRC awards that had overridden the policy terms on equitable grounds were set aside. The judgment is the motor-insurance extension of the Chandumull Jain construction canon and a disciplinary correction of consumer-forum overreach.
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.
On 17 March 2026, the Competition Commission of India closed a complaint against Roppen Transportation (Rapido) over alleged use of private (white-plate) vehicles in its bike-taxi service. The Commission's reasoning was jurisdictional: the dispute fell within the specialised framework of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and not within the Commission's competition-law jurisdiction. A digest of the order, the jurisdictional doctrine, and what it reveals about the Commission's posture on overlap with sectoral regulation.