Discovery Life has filed a notice for leave to appeal a High Court judgment that ordered it to pay a former stockbroker, who was charged and acquitted of murdering his girlfriend, more than R25m after it previously repudiated his permanent disability claim.

Moneyweb reports that Discovery confirmed it had filed the notice for leave to appeal but did not know when the appeal will be heard. The company said it has studied the judgment and believes it could potentially have far-reaching implications for the life insurance industry.

‘The implication of this is that insurers are liable to pay insurance claims when claimants only qualify for the conditions covered under the policy a significant amount of time after the policy has lapsed,’ it said.

The former stockbroker, who was not named, claimed he became totally and permanently unable to carry on that work at some point between December 2014 and November 2015. This followed him suffering a string of deeply traumatic events during that time that have left him with a combination of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and unspecified bipolar mood disorder. These events were the drowning of his girlfriend in December 2014 at a resort in Mauritius where he owned a villa, his arrest in January 2015 on suspicion of murdering his girlfriend, and being detained pending the trial. 

He was eventually acquitted of his girlfriend’s murder and returned to SA in March 2016, where he was hospitalised in Pietermaritzburg and diagnosed with PTSD and major depression, reports Moneyweb.

In a judgment handed down in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) on 31 March, Judge Stuart Wilson said there was no serious dispute between the parties that – over eight years after the events that triggered the former stockbroker’s condition – he was unable to work as a stockbroker and there was no sign he would be able to do so in the foreseeable future.

He said the next question is whether, on a balance of probabilities, the former stockbroker’s condition permanently incapacitated him on or before 30 November 2015, when his policy with Discovery expired.

Wilson said that while nobody could have identified the permanency of the former stockbroker’s condition on 30 November 2015, it is clear on the evidence the condition was in fact permanent, even if the evidence necessary to establish that permanence has only subsequently come to light.

Wilson said Discovery’s liability under the policy was triggered at the point the former stockbroker’s inability to perform as a stockbroker objectively became permanent, but its duty to pay out was only triggered once there were facts in existence that would have satisfied a reasonable insurer that his incapacity had become permanent.

Full Moneyweb report