NATIONAL INSURANCE CO LTD Vs. U C DHIMAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Whether the insurers can validly repudiate a motor vehicle insurance claim on the ground that the insured was not the registered owner thereof and had no other disclosed insurable interest therein? This indeed is the solitary significant question in this appeal.

(2.) The material facts are not at all in serious dispute. The respondent Shri U. C. Dhiman took out an insurance policy for a sum of Rs. one lac for car No. DNC-8164 for a period of one year with effect from the 27th of September, 1989. In the proposal form and the relevant documents, he categorically stated himself as the owner of the car in whose name the same was registered. The vehicle met with an accident after three months of the date of the insurance policy on the 15th of December, 1989. Inevitably, he lodged a claim, there for and on a surveyor being appointed, the loss was assessed at a sum of Rs.20550-48 P. only. The appellants however, repudiated the claim and aggrieved thereby, the respondent had preferred the complaint.

(3.) On notice being issued, the appellants firmly resisted the complaint. Whilst admitting the factum of the execution of the insurance policy, it was highlighted that at all material times the respondent was not the registered owner of the car at all and infact it stood in the name of one Mr. Gharpure. It was pleaded that the investigation subsequent to the surveyor's report disclose that it was not till more than six months of the execution of the policy and equally for nearly three months of the happening of the accident that the vehicle was got transferred in the respondent's name on the 8th of March, 1990. It was pleaded that the respondent had fraudulently held himself put as the registered owner of the car and the insurance contract being one of the utmost good faith stood vitiated by the established false averments in the proposal form. It was further the case that the policy was void, abinitio and in any case the respondent had no insurable interest in the vehicle at the material time and consequently his claim was rightly repudiated.