This is how the story goes….
A lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina purchased a box of 24 very rare and expensive cigars, and then insured them against, among other things, fire.
Within a month of having smoked his entire cigars, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated that 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 – by smoking them. The lawyer then sued the insurance company and WON!
In 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, in 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 therefore 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 that perished in the ' small fires'.
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 story supposedly won First Place the 2001 Criminal Lawyers Award contest.
However, this sounded too good to be true so I did a Google search (yes, I am a kill joy) and found that it was not a true story (see article HERE). But I have to give the writer kudos for a very active imagination. Well done. And it did make a good story, if nothing else!
BTW, I will be posting a new music album later today. Watch this space.
Checking the link, the story is from 2002 so it has been around for a while then.
ReplyDeleteAmazing that someone actually sat down & thought it up !
Below is a link to another fantastic story. This one is so far-fetched I doubt it could be true, however it does make a good read ...
http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-16.html
Hi AJ, yes, it's been around a while but this was the first time it crossed my path. And yes, someone has a very active imagination.
ReplyDeleteOMG, what a story! A much more active imagination here. Poor Ronald Opus. One consolation though, if he was Catholic, he would be able to go to heaven as he died because of the gun shot not because of the suicide!