MADURAI: Non-disclosure of comorbidities cannot be a ground to deny insurance settlement, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court said and directed an insurance company to pay `26.87 lakh insurance amount to a woman whose husband died due to Covid-19 in the first phase of its outbreak.
A bench of justices CV Karthikeyan and R Sakthivel gave the direction recently, while allowing an appeal filed by the woman challenging an order passed by a single judge upholding the insurance company’s rejection order dated February 11, 2021.
The company had rejected the woman’s claim on the ground that her husband did not disclose that he had diabetes and hypertension when he obtained the policy. The single judge accepted the reason and dismissed her petition in 2024.
Hearing the appeal, the judges observed, “It is common knowledge that Corona virus would affect everybody, whether they are suffering from hypertension or from diabetes.” They also noted that the woman’s husband had died in the first phase of Covid-19, when the medical world still did not know the effects of the virus and the proper treatment and measures to be taken to prevent infection.
Hence, the risk of death by coronavirus was a supervening circumstance and was not available as a cause for death, at the time when the policy was introduced or was entered into between the parties, the bench pointed out and directed the company to honour its commitment by paying the policy amount to the woman. However, the company need not pay interest on the amount, the court added.