My story this week is inspired by a clip that has been appearing on social media recently about a lawyer and a box of very rare and expensive cigars which he bought and insured against, amongst other things, fire. Within a month, he had smoked all 24 of these great cigars and without even having made his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer alleged that the cigars were lost in a series of small fires.
The insurance company refused to pay citing the obvious reason that the lawyer had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued and won. Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. Nevertheless, the judge noted that the lawyer had a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what would be considered acceptable fire and was obligated to pay the claim.
