Tuesday, August 14, 2007

A lawyer story

Get the following story via chain-mail the second time, don't know if it's true or not. The first time I read this story was a few years back, so it's not new. But I still think it's funny and can resist to blog it. There it goes.

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A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires."

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued and WON!

(Stay with me.)

Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable "fire" and was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars lost in the "fires".

NOW FOR THE BEST PART...

After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

This is a true story and was the First Place winner in the recent Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.

ONLY IN AMERICA , NO WONDER THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES THINK WE'RE NUTS!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fake.

Firstly, the story suggested that the cigar owner did not report to the police the lost of the first and subsequent cigars right after each of them were burnt nor did he made claims to the insurance company individually until all of them were burnt away. Try that to a house or a car without reporting to the police or making claim to the insurance company even within 48 hours. Unless the owner finished the entire box of cigars within 48 hours but then which would make all that work seem pretty pointless not having able to really enjoy the cigars.

Secondly, just exactly how were they able to prove that it was the cigar owner who started all those fires beyond reasonable doubt even if there were remains of the cigar ends after all that time unless the owner were stupid enough to admit that in the first case?

Thirdly, there would have been a case number with the location of the case and the names of the involved parties readily available publicly had it been a real case, would there not?

Frankie Chu said...

http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/cigarson.asp

Toby Chiu said...

Thanks for comment... do you guys have too much time?