HC appoints one-man committee to determine compensation

The Madras High Court has appointed Justice R.S. Ramanathan, a retired High Court judge, as the one-man committee to determine the compensation to be paid to each of the 16 people who contracted Hepatitis C while undergoing dialysis at the Government Stanley Medical Hospital here in August 2014.
The bench appointed the committee when the government pleader withdrew his earlier assurance of paying compensation of Rs five lakh and said government was willing to pay only Rs three lakh.
The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan, said in its order that "the only aspect of the final compensation to be determined and it is suggested on behalf of the affected persons that instead of relegating the parties to a common law remedy, keeping in mind their economic status, it may be appropriate to appoint a one-judge committee which may determine the final compensation in each of the cases, as it may vary."

The bench said this "cannot be seriously disputed" by the Advocate General. "We thus appoint Justice R S Ramanathan, a retired judge of this court, as the one-man committee to determine the compensation to be paid to each of the 16 cases affected by the tragedy."
It expected that the committee would complete its task within a maximum period of six months.
The bench then posted the matter for listing after the committee submitted its report.

The matter relates to a PIL filed by Jayaram Venkatesan seeking a direction to the Health Department to provide special treatment to the patients and award them adequate compensation, besides constituting an expert committee to ascertain the cause for spread of the virus in the hospital.

The case relates to 16 patients who contracted Hepatitis C while undergoing dialysis at the Government Stanley Medical Hospital.
The court had earlier pulled up the state overnment for failing to disburse Rs two lakh from the total compensation amount of Rs five lakh each to the patients.