Kathmandu. An insurance claim case has come to light in Mumbai, India. The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has ordered an insurance company to pay a claim of more than Rs 8 crore for fire insurance. <\/p>\n
Seven years after the customs bonded warehouse of Swiss company Victorix India Pvt was destroyed in a fire, the consumer court has given a major blow to the insurance company. The commission has ordered the insurance company New India Assurance to pay more than Rs 8.06 crore for wrongly rejecting the company’s fire insurance claim. <\/p>\n
In its order dated September 2, the Commission (South Mumbai) said the company’s genuine claim was rejected “on technical grounds and without due consideration”. <\/p>\n
The company that filed the complaint against the insurance company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Switzerland’s Victorix AG. The company exports, imports, and distributes travel bags, knives, luxury watches, cutlery and other consumer products manufactured in India by its parent company. The company had taken the standard fire and special services policy from New India Assurance. <\/p>\n
“It was not legally permissible to reject the insurance company’s claim on the grounds of non-compliance with procedural rules without any substantive disagreement or fraudulent intention,” the Mumbai Consumer Commission panel said. \u2019<\/p>\n
According to the company’s complaint, on February 16, 2019, there was a major fire in the company’s custom-bonded warehouse. According to the information, it is a secure government-compliant storage facility, where imported goods are stored. <\/p>\n
According to the complainant, the warehouse staff took immediate and necessary steps to douse the fire. However, as the fire worsened, the fire service of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) was called in. “Despite all efforts, the intensity of the fire caused extensive damage to the goods stored there,” the complaint said. \u2019<\/p>\n
In the complaint, the surveyor appointed by the insurance company estimated the total loss burden at 8,06,49,573. However, the insurance company rejected the claim in January 2021. The company argued that Clause 6(i) had been violated without submitting certain internal agreements and invoices. <\/p>\n
The commission examined the e-mail records. It found that Victorinox provided frequently requested documents to answer the surveyor’s questions and also participated in virtual conferences. The panel observed that the surveyor inspected the site and calculated and evaluated the damage based on various documents submitted by the insured. <\/p>\n
“In our opinion, it was wrong and legally inappropriate to reject the claim citing clause 6(b) of the policy after assessing the loss and damage caused by the fire and having no objection raised by either party,” the panel said. \u2019<\/p>\n
The panel concluded that the insurance company had rejected the claim “on technical grounds only, without any cogent or justifiable reason”. Therefore, the complainant is entitled to an insurance claim of Rs 8,06,49,573. The panel also ordered New India Assurance to pay 9 per cent interest from the date of filing of the complaint. <\/p>\n
The court also ordered the insurance company to pay Rs 50,000 for mental harassment and Rs 50 for legal expenses within 45 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu. An insurance claim case has come to light in Mumbai, India. The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has ordered an insurance company to pay a claim of more than Rs 8 crore for fire insurance. Seven years after the customs bonded warehouse of Swiss company Victorix India Pvt was destroyed in a fire, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":315844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45044,45159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news-en","category-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315848,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315847\/revisions\/315848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media\/315844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}