- Court says schools purchase buses and insure them for use by students and staff only.
- Similarly, Justice Roselyne Aburili of the High Court in Kisumu has directed that boards of management of schools be served with her judgment.
Image: The Star
Those who hire school buses for transport to crusades, weddings or funerals are not entitled to insurance compensation in case of accidents, the High Court has ruled.
Similarly, Justice Roselyne Aburili of the High Court in Kisumu has directed that boards of management of schools be served with her judgment so that they don't risk the lives and limb of the innocent unauthorised passengers who use school buses on hire.
Her judgment was in relation to a civil suit filed by Old Mutual General Insurance Kenya Limited against the board of directors of Oder Boys Boarding Special School.
The school had hired out its bus to its sponsors, the SDA Church, which used the vehicle to transport church members to a function in Kakamega county.
The bus was later involved in an accident along the Kisumu-Kakamega road. Many of the passengers were injured.
They sued for compensation, but the cases were later withdrawn.
Old Mutual, however, went to court seeking orders that the school had breached the insurance agreement by hiring out its bus.
The insurance firm also sought a declaration that is not liable to make any payment under the aforesaid policy in respect of any claims arising out of the injuries sustained as a result of the accident that happened on April 23, 2023.
The school in its response admitted that the passengers in the bus were church members who were sponsors of the school and that liability of compensation does not extend to them.
The school also insisted that the substratum of the suit had been overtaken by events given all the suits arising from the said accident were withdrawn.
But in her judgment delivered on August 8, 2024, Justice Aburili ruled that Old Mutual is not liable to make any payment under the aforesaid policy of insurance in respect of any claims against the school arising out of the injuries sustained as a result of the accident.
The judge noted that schools purchase buses and insure them for use by students and staff only.
However, on other occasions, they rent out the said motor vehicles at a fee to ferry people from the neighbourhoods or school sponsors, going to funerals, and attending weddings.
"It is not uncommon, especially during crusades and other religious gatherings in this country’s major cities, to see all school vehicles lined up from all parts of the nation in their beautiful yellow colours, scaling heights and going down the valleys, leading to those crusades, carrying believers or worshippers," the judge noted in the preamble to her judgment.
However, the insurance policy that they take out happens to exclude those kinds of passengers otherwise known as unauthorised passengers. When accidents occur, the policy is avoided or voided and the injured passengers or dead passengers’ loved ones end up being mere pious explorers in the pursuit of justice and bearing barren decrees as the schools can barely bear the burden of settling such claims which are left to them, the court added.
She directed boards of management of schools to beware and for those who hire school buses and ensure they read the insurance policy in respect of the usage of those buses before hiring them out.
"I do trust and hope that this brief judgment will be circulated to all schools in the country through the county directors of education to alert school management boards, of the dangers associated with the practice, which danger only comes to the fore when there is an accident upon suits being filed by those affected," she said.