A man from Charlotte, North Carolina, having purchased a case of very expensive cigars, insured them against, among other things, fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile, the man filed a claim against the insurance company, stating 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. The man sued – and won.
In delivering the ruling the judge, agreeing that the claim was frivolous, stated nevertheless that the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without defining what it considered to be 'unacceptable fire' , and was obliged to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he had lost 'in the fires' .
After he cashed the cheque, however, the 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 man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.
© Copyright 2008
11 comments
thats genius!!!
all round genius
and theres probably a moral too
what a FREAK
http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/cigarson.asp
You will notice the Insurance company is always right.
Second of all I don't see how he could be convicted of arson. I'm no legal expert but I have a hard time believing that a jury would convict him of that. Sure the insurance company could have him arrested and maybe a prosecutor would be willing to go through with a trial but I think it hard to get a conviction when a judge had already ruled that the insurance company had to pay him meaning that he hadn't committed insurance fraud. I mean how can smoking your own cigars be considered arson? The only thing he could be convicted of is insurance fraud and that didn't happen. But let's say all of that did happen and a jury did convict him of arson. I think it would have been far more likely for him to have negotiated with the prosecutors for probation in exchange for dropping the claim against the insurance company and giving back the $15k. And even if he did serve jail time I doubt it would be 2 years. No judge is going to sentence someone to 2 years of jail for burning cigars. But again, I think more than likely if this had really happened then his attorney would have probably negotiated a deal before this went to trial. He reverses his claim and gives back the money and they don't prosecute him for arson or insurance fraud.