ศาลปกครอง

Provincial Rural Road Office’s liability regarding injuries arising from its failure to follow Authoritative (Department of Rural Road) instruction in road maintenance

In this case, the Defendant No.2 was liable for the decedent’s death as it neglected to perform its statutory duty in maintaining the road as instructed. Upon considering the cause of death, the Court held that the absence of street signs especially timber barricade at the location of the incident was material. Although a timber barricade may not directly prevent the incident, it could have helped reduce the severity of such incident had the Defendant No.2 installed a timber barricade as specified in the Defendant No.3’s instruction. The barricade would have stopped the motorcycle and the decedent from going as far as 10 meters from the edge of the road and thereby prevent the decedent from submerging which led to the decedent’s death. Meanwhile, the decedent was also at fault, as the decedent was driving the motorcycle at a high speed that exceeded what a reasonable driver would during twilight or night-time and when approaching a junction, an act in which a reasonable person would not have done so in similar circumstances. The decedent’s death was directly caused by his own act of negligence and the authority’s, the Defendant No.2, failure to perform its statutory duty. Having both the decedent and the Defendant No.2 responsible for the injuries occurred from the incident, the Supreme Administrative Court determined after weighing and comparing the circumstance and level of negligence of each party that the decedent’s negligence was more material and ordered the Defendant No.3 as the Defendant No.2’s supervisory state agency to pay one-third of the compensation sought by the Plaintiff, as the mother of the decedent, for its contribution.