New India Assurance Ordered to Pay Rs 8.06 Crore Fire Insurance Claim to Victorinox India
New India Assurance must pay Rs 8.06 crore after the insurer was directed to settle the fire insurance claim filed by Victorinox India.
New India Assurance has been ordered to pay Rs 8.06 crore over a fire insurance claim involving Victorinox India.
New India Assurance: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (South Mumbai) has directed New India Assurance Company to pay Rs 8,06,49,573 to Victorinox India Pvt Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of Switzerland’s Victorinox AG, after finding that the insurer had wrongly rejected a fire insurance claim on procedural grounds. The order, passed on September 2, came nearly seven years after a fire destroyed the company’s customs bonded warehouse in Mumbai, and follows a prolonged dispute between the two sides over documentation the insurer said was missing.
Victorinox India handles the export, import and distribution of travel bags, knives, luxury watches, cutlery and other consumer products manufactured by its Swiss parent company. The firm held a Standard Fire & Special Perils Policy from New India Assurance covering its customs bonded warehouse, a secure, government-regulated facility used to store imported goods before duties are cleared.
According to the complaint, a major fire broke out at the warehouse on February 16, 2019. Staff present at the site took immediate steps to try to contain the blaze, and as the fire continued to spread, assistance was sought from the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) Fire Services. Despite these efforts, the fire caused large-scale destruction to the goods stored in the warehouse, the complaint stated.
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New India Assurance: Insurer Cited Procedural Lapse, Not Loss Dispute
Following the fire, New India Assurance appointed a surveyor to inspect the site and assess the damage. The surveyor examined the warehouse and the documents submitted by Victorinox India and put the net loss at Rs 8,06,49,573. The insurer, however, went on to repudiate the claim in January 2021, citing a breach of Clause 6(i) of the policy over the non-submission of specific internal agreements and invoices.
Victorinox India contested this, and the matter eventually came before the consumer commission. In examining the record, including email correspondence between the two sides, the commission found that Victorinox had repeatedly supplied the documents requested by the surveyor and had participated in virtual conferences to resolve outstanding queries. The panel noted that the surveyor’s loss assessment had been carried out on the basis of a site inspection and the documents furnished by the insured, and that this assessment itself was never disputed by either party at any stage.
The commission held that once the loss assessment stood unchallenged, repudiating the claim by invoking a procedural clause of the policy was “unfair” and “legally unsustainable,” particularly in the absence of any allegation of fraud or any substantive disagreement over the merits of the claim. It concluded that New India Assurance had rejected the claim “solely on technical grounds, without any valid or justifiable reason,” and that this amounted to both an unfair trade practice and a deficiency in service toward the complainant.
New India Assurance: Insurer Ordered to Pay Claim Amount With Interest and Compensation
Based on these findings, the commission held that Victorinox India was entitled to receive the full insurance claim of Rs 8,06,49,573 as assessed by the insurer’s own surveyor. New India Assurance was directed to pay this amount along with 9 per cent annual interest, calculated from the date the complaint was originally filed before the commission.
In addition to the principal claim amount and interest, the commission ordered New India Assurance to pay Rs 50,000 as compensation for the mental distress caused to the complainant and a further Rs 50,000 towards litigation costs. The order specifies that the full payment, comprising the claim amount, interest and compensation, is to be made within 45 days.
The dispute spanned more than seven years from the date of the fire to the commission’s final order, covering the initial claim process, the surveyor’s assessment, the insurer’s repudiation in 2021, and the subsequent consumer commission proceedings in Mumbai. The order was passed by the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, South Mumbai.
