Legal Articles and Guides

As expected, Guardrisk is to appeal the Western Cape High Court ruling that ordered the company to pay out the business interruption claims of Cape Town restaurant, Café Chameleon.

With business interruption insurance policies still the subject of court action, the financial services regulator has struck a telling blow for hundreds of small businesses facing ruin because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown by threatening action against short-term insurers refusing to pay out on claims caused by losses resulting from the pandemic.

Cafe Chameleon, a Cape Town restaurant, is the first to win a court case against an insurer for payment of damages arising from a business interruption policy due to the Covid-19 pandemic, says a Business Day report.

A precedent-setting case is scheduled to be launched in the Western Cape High Court today when two Santam clients seek to force the short-term insurer's hand to pay Covid-19 related claims for their hotels and restaurants.

Insurance companies are facing serious losses if the Covid-19 pandemic escalates, but even as they prepare for the various worst-case scenarios, an expert said it is unlikely that the industry will collapse.

Tiger Brands’ attempt to hide the identity of its insurer – which is pulling the strings in a class action lawsuit brought by listeriosis victims – has come to nought.

The SCA has ordered an insurance company to honour professional indemnity cover for a broker who led his client to invest in the Sharemax scheme. Volksblad reports that a widow, Marisa Oosthuizen, invested R2m on the advice of her broker, Jose Castro.

Motor vehicle insurance companies can reject car accident claims on the grounds of drunk driving, even if there is no toxicology report to prove it. TimesLIVE reports that insurers can rely on circumstantial evidence, such as witnesses saying the driver smelt of alcohol or acted drunk at the accident scene to substantiate rejecting a claim.

Liberty Life has failed in its bid to reject a payment to a disabled claimant, and has been ordered to cough up. A Cape Times report says long-term Insurance Ombudsman Judge Ron McLaren ordered Liberty Life to pay an unemployed diabetic a disability benefit of about R200 000, which includes interest. The claimant at the centre of the dispute was diagnosed with diabetes with ‘severe peripheral neuropathy’ in July 2012.

The damages claim of a seven-year-old boy who developed cerebral palsy after state medical staff at the Mowbray Maternity Hospital failed to diagnose that he had jaundice at birth, is set to be finalised, according to a Weekend Argus report. It notes the Western Cape High Court has handed down a judgment in which it determined the boy’s life expectancy and found his expected age of death was 55. The parties’ lawyers and the Centre for Child Law spent 45 days thrashing out the issues before Judge Owen Rogers.