The Public Liability Insurance Act 1991: Relief Without Fault

In one line

A person injured by an accident with a hazardous substance can go to the Collector, prove nothing about fault, and be paid from a policy the factory was obliged to buy.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: the Public Liability Insurance Act 1991, Act 6 of 1991, was enacted to provide immediate relief to persons affected by an accident occurring while handling a hazardous substance; section 3 makes the owner liable to give relief on the principle of no fault, and expressly relieves the claimant of the burden of pleading and establishing that the death, injury or damage was due to any wrongful act, neglect or default of any person; section 4 obliges every owner to take out one or more insurance policies before he starts handling a hazardous substance; section 5 requires the Collector to verify an accident and give publicity to it; section 6 provides for an application to the Collector within five years; and section 7 for the award.

Where the Act came from

Bhopal in 1984 exposed a hole that no amount of tort law could fill. A victim of an industrial accident could sue, and could rely after December 1986 on absolute liability, and would still wait years for a decree and longer for execution, by which time the family that needed money for a hospital had none. What was missing was not a rule of liability but a payment.

This Act supplies the payment. It is deliberately small. It does not decide who was at fault, it does not decide the final measure of damages, and it does not exclude any other claim. It puts a fixed sum in the hands of the victim quickly, and leaves everything else to the ordinary law. Section 8(1) says so: the right to claim relief under section 3(1) is in addition to any other right to claim compensation under any other law for the time being in force.

Section 2, the definitions that decide the case

Accident, in clause (a). An accident involving a fortuitous or sudden or unintended occurrence while handling any hazardous substance resulting in continuous or intermittent or repeated exposure to death of, or injury to, any person or damage to any property, but does not include an accident by reason only of war or radio-activity.

Three things are packed into that. The occurrence must be fortuitous, sudden or unintended, so a deliberate discharge is not an accident. The exposure may be continuous, intermittent or repeated, so a slow leak counts as much as an explosion. And war and radioactivity are out, the second because radioactive material is governed by the Atomic Energy Act 1962.

Hazardous substance, in clause (d). Any substance or preparation defined as a hazardous substance under the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 and exceeding such quantity as may be specified by the Central Government by notification.