A trial court had awarded a retired executive over Rs 15 lakh after he was evicted from company accommodation through no fault of his own. He died before the appeal was heard. The High Court upheld the finding that his employer was negligent, but held that the largest part of the award, for mental agony and loss of prestige, did not survive his death and could not pass to his heirs.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has partly allowed an appeal by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited against a damages decree obtained by a former General Manager who was evicted from his official residential accommodation, holding that his compensation for mental agony, loss of prestige and inconvenience abated on his death during the pendency of the proceedings and could not be inherited by his legal representatives [BPCL v. D.P. Dhall (through his legal heirs)].
Justice Mini Pushkarna upheld the trial court’s finding that the corporation had been negligent and its award for the balance repair of damaged household goods, while setting aside the far larger sums awarded for mental agony and for loss of cash and jewellery.
The background
The plaintiff was employed by the corporation as a General Manager and retired in 2005, having been on deputation with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas at the relevant time. As a manager-level employee he had been allotted a residential flat in South Extension-II in New Delhi, which the corporation held on a lease from its private owner.
When the corporation and the owner fell out over a rent increase, the owner terminated the tenancy and sued the corporation for possession. That suit was decreed in the owner’s favour in 2004 and possession was taken in execution. On October 25, 2004, the owner’s power of attorney holder, assisted by a bailiff, broke open the lock of the flat in the plaintiff’s absence and removed his belongings onto the road. His wife lodged an FIR.
The critical fact, which the courts returned to, is that the plaintiff was not a party to either the possession suit or the execution proceedings. He learnt of his own eviction only when it happened. He later sued the corporation for Rs 20 lakh in damages, and in 2017 the trial court decreed the suit for Rs 15.30 lakh, comprising Rs 10 lakh for mental agony, loss of prestige and inconvenience, Rs 4.80 lakh for loss of cash, jewellery and valuables, and Rs 50,000 towards the balance repair of damaged goods, with interest and costs.
The plaintiff died in January 2016, while the suit was still pending, and his widow and two children were brought on record. The corporation appealed.
Negligence upheld
The Court first affirmed the finding that the corporation was liable in negligence. As the tenant that had allotted the flat to its employee and then deducted occupation charges from his salary, it owed him a duty of care arising from the proximity of their relationship. Having contested and lost the possession litigation, it neither impleaded him nor kept him informed, with the result that he and his family remained unaware of the eviction decree and the warrant of possession until the eviction was carried out. That failure, the Court held, established negligence and tortious liability, and there was no infirmity in the trial court’s finding warranting interference.
On that footing the award of Rs 50,000 towards the balance repair of the damaged household goods was upheld, the Court noting that the corporation’s own valuer had assessed the damage at Rs 1.43 lakh, so a decree of Rs 50,000 under this head disclosed no error. The costs of the suit were also upheld.
The cash and jewellery claim fails on evidence
The award of Rs 4.48 lakh for lost cash and jewellery was set aside, but on evidentiary grounds rather than on abatement. The Court noted that the FIR lodged by the plaintiff’s wife recorded the loss of a phone but made no mention of any missing cash or jewellery, and that the plaintiff had admitted in cross-examination that his police complaint did not mention such loss.
No bank withdrawal slip, purchase bill or other document was produced to show that the family possessed cash of Rs 48,000 and jewellery worth Rs 4 lakh on the date of eviction. The Court also noted a contradiction, in that in the earlier execution proceedings the plaintiff’s wife had put the missing cash at Rs 30,000 and the loss against articles and assets at a figure running into crores. In the absence of documentary proof, the Court held, no amount could be awarded merely on the peculiar circumstances of the case.
Why the mental agony award died with him
The Rs 10 lakh awarded for mental agony, loss of prestige and inconvenience is where the appeal turned on a point of law, and it is the part of the judgment with the widest application.
The governing provision is Section 306 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925. It provides that all demands and rights of action survive to and against a deceased person’s executors or administrators, with two exceptions: causes of action for defamation, assault or other personal injuries not causing death, and cases where the relief sought could not be enjoyed after death or granting it would be nugatory.
The Court explained that the words “other personal injuries” are read ejusdem generis with defamation and assault, so as to cover any injury to a person’s dignity, reputation or mental peace. A claim for mental agony and loss of prestige is therefore a personal injury within the first exception, and it does not survive the death of the person who suffered it. Drawing on the distinction the Supreme Court has made between personal rights and proprietary rights, the Court noted that a personal right attaches to a person’s status and dies with him, while a proprietary right relates to his estate and passes to his heirs. Damages for loss of reputation, pain and suffering fall on the personal side of that line.
Applying the rule from the Supreme Court’s decision in M. Veerappa v. Evelyn Sequeira, the Court explained the mechanism at work. Where a suit claim is founded entirely on tort, it abates on death; where it is founded partly on tort and partly on contract, the tortious part abates and the rest survives; and the maxim that a personal action dies with the person is displaced only where the injury has tangibly affected the deceased’s estate or enriched the wrongdoer.
Measured against that, the Rs 10 lakh for mental agony, loss of prestige and inconvenience was not tangible and formed no part of the plaintiff’s estate. The right to sue for it had abated on his death, and it could not have been granted to his legal representatives. That award was accordingly set aside.
What survived
The net result is that of a decree originally worth Rs 15.30 lakh, only the Rs 50,000 for repair of damaged goods and the suit costs of Rs 22,278 survive, together with the interest attaching to the smaller sum. The corporation’s broader contention, that the entire suit had abated on the plaintiff’s death, was not accepted, since the claim for damage to goods is a loss to the estate and survives. The appeal was allowed in part.
Why it matters
The outcome is harsh in its practical effect and precise in its logic, and the two things are worth holding together. A man was wronged, a court said so, and yet the largest part of what a court awarded him has evaporated because he did not live to collect it. That is not a gap in the reasoning; it is what Section 306 requires. Compensation for hurt to feelings, dignity and reputation is personal to the sufferer, and the law does not treat the distress of the dead as an asset their family inherits.
The distinction the judgment draws is the one that decides these cases. Damage to goods, medical expense, quantifiable financial loss, all of that is a dent in the estate and passes to the heirs. Mental agony, loss of prestige, pain and suffering do not, because they are not things the estate can be said to have lost. A litigant with a mixed claim who dies mid-suit therefore keeps the property-based heads and loses the personal ones, which is exactly the split that occurred here.
There is a practical lesson in it for how such claims are pleaded and pursued. Where a plaintiff is elderly or unwell and the litigation is likely to be long, the personal-injury heads carry a risk that the proprietary heads do not, and the incentive to press the suit to conclusion in the plaintiff’s lifetime is correspondingly greater. It also underlines why documentary proof matters: the cash and jewellery claim here failed not because it abated but because nothing was produced to support it, and unlike the mental agony head it could have survived had it been proved, since it was a claim of loss to the estate.
The finding on negligence should not be lost in the arithmetic. A public sector undertaking that litigated over its employee’s home, lost, and then let him be evicted without warning has been held to have breached a duty of care it owed him. That finding stands. What the death of the plaintiff changed was not whether the wrong occurred, but how much of the compensation for it the law allows his family to keep.
Case Title: BPCL v. D.P. Dhall (through his legal heirs) [RFA 937/2017]
Bench: Justice Mini Pushkarna, High Court of Delhi at New Delhi
Reserved on: May 25, 2026 | Pronounced on: September 9, 2026
Order Under Challenge: Judgment and decree dated June 9, 2017 of the Additional District Judge-03 (Central), Tis Hazari Courts, Delhi in CS No. 99/2016
Appearances: Advocates Anil Kumar Batra, Shashi Bala and Dhruv Kumar for the appellant. Senior Advocate Sonia Mathur with a team of advocates for the respondents.