Who says insurance agents don’t have a sense of humor? They’d have to, to sit back and read some of the insurance claims that drivers and homeowners file today without becoming raving lunatics! Here is a collection of the funniest, most ludicrous and most outrageous insurance claims to ever pass across the desk of an insurance claims director, as told by comedian Jasper Carrott, website www.businessballs.com and the Charlotte evening news.
1)A Charlotte lawyer purchased a box of costly cigars and insured them against flood, storm damage and, of all things, fire. Needless to say, his investment went up in (happily inhaled) smoke within a month, after which the lawyer filed a claim with his homeowners insurance company that he was owed compensation because “the cigars were lost in a series of small fires”. The insurer refused to pay, assuming (correctly) that the man had smoked the pack himself. A judge ruled, however, that since the insurer had never stated what was considered to be “unacceptable” fire the company did, in fact, owe him $15,000 to replace his property.
The insurance company paid the claim, but they got their own back in the end. The lawyer was then arrested, sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine for 24 counts of arson and insurance fraud.
2)True story: When asked to describe how he had come to have a one on one with a lamppost the driver stated that he had not been able to see the post because “it was obscured by human beings.”