The Supreme Court set aside an NCDRC order that found medical negligence in antenatal care, when the complaint had pleaded negligence only in post-delivery management. A consumer forum cannot construct a new case the complainant never pleaded, and relief must stay confined to the case as pleaded.
The NCDRC dismissed Fortis neurosurgeons' appeal and upheld a ₹50 lakh award, holding negligence proved on res ipsa loquitur where surgery proceeded without fresh pre-operative investigations and without informed consent, while exonerating the hospital.
The Supreme Court held that an allottee facing delayed possession is entitled to a refund with the agreed rate of interest, but cannot also recover the interest paid on a personal home loan. The contractual interest already compensates for every consequence of the delay, so stacking a separate loan-interest award amounts to impermissible double recovery.
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.
The Supreme Court set aside an NCDRC finding of negligence against an eye surgeon, holding that a worsening outcome after surgery does not prove negligence. The Court reaffirmed the Bolam test and placed the burden of proving negligence on the complainant, who had led no expert evidence.
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 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.
The NCDRC set aside Oriental Insurance's repudiation of a film distributor's loss-of-revenue claim as arbitrary, a deficiency in service, awarding ₹3.80 crore.
NCDRC set aside a ₹15 lakh award against Fortis Hospital: a medical-negligence claimant must prove breach, injury and causation; a bad result is not negligence.
The NCDRC held National Insurance liable: repudiating a fidelity-guarantee claim four years after filing is itself a deficiency in service, whatever the merits.
On 2 November 2020 a two-judge bench of U.U. Lalit and Vineet Saran, JJ. — the judgment authored by Lalit J. — held that Section 79 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, which bars the civil-court jurisdiction over matters within the RERA Authority's remit, does not oust the jurisdiction of the consumer fora under the Consumer Protection Act 1986. The NCDRC and consumer fora are not 'civil courts' within the meaning of the Code of Civil Procedure; the Section 71(1) proviso, Section 88 and the 'without prejudice' framing of Section 18 of RERA preserve the consumer remedy alongside the RERA architecture. The choice of forum vests in the allottee, and the entitlement to maintain an action runs from the builder-buyer agreement date and not from the RERA registration date.