Crazy Cigar Insurance Goes Up In Smoke

Some of you may find this hard to believe but this is a very real insurance claim. A lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina bought himself a very expensive, rare box of cigars. In all of his wisdom he decided that it would be a good idea to insure the cigars of all things against fire damage. Ludicrous, yes but wrong to do it? No, not really he had a right to insure them seeing as they were a rare box.

After a month and after smoking his entire stockpile of these cigars he made a claim. He hadn’t even paid his first premium payment on his policy. In his claim, he stated that the cigars had been lost due to a “small series of fires.”

Unsurprisingly the man’s insurance company refused to pay out. Their reason for refusing to pay out; the man had obviously consumed his cigars in the normal fashion. So in response to this the lawyer decided to sue the insurance company and he won.

When the judge passed his ruling he agreed with the insurance company that the lawyer’s claim was frivolous but he said that aside from that the lawyer had a policy with the company and it was in fact the company who agreed that the cigars were insurable and in this policy guaranteed to cover them against fire damage.

They were forced to pay out after failing to define what they deem to be “unacceptable fire”. They reluctantly paid out $15,000 to cover the lawyer for his loss of cigars in the “fire.”

However after the lawyer cashed his cheque, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. After having his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous cased used against him he was sentenced to 24 months prison and fined $24,000!

The man could obviously do with employing some loss assessors to help him through this at minimal cost after his insurance company’s loss adjusters cleaned him out of $24,000.