Case Study 17 - Commission forces insurance payout

The National Consumer Commission has upheld the lower forum's order directing an insurance company to pay Rs 50,000 compensation to a stationary shopkeeper who claimed to have suffered losses due to fire.

The Commission, however, pulled up the petitioner for registering the exaggerated claim without producing any bills before it.

"Since the petitioner is claiming to be a shopkeeper, it cannot be held that there was no sale of his articles during the period of four months. In fact the months of July, August, September being the peak season for the sale of notebooks/registers to students, he would have sold out most of his stock prior to the incident of fire," the Commission bench, headed by Justice Ashok Bhan, said.

Satya Narayan Sharma, the petitioner, approached the Commission seeking restoration of the district forum's directive to the United India Insurance Corporation Limited to pay Rs 2.68 lakh.

The Rajasthan State Consumer Commission watered down the relief to a lump-sum compensation of Rs 50,000 after considering that no books of accounts, sale bills and stock register was produced before it to establish the claim.

The National Commission said the petitioner had violated the sanctity of the contract after having resorted to false claim of purchase from another stationer.

"The claim of Rs 2.68 lakh cannot be justified. We say so because even if the purchase of articles worth Rs 1.99 lakh is reckoned to be true, the bills pertained to the period from April to June, 2002 whereas the incident of fire occurred in November, 2002 after a gap of more than four months," the Commission said.