Businesswoman sues Insurance Company for allegedly refusing to pay Insurance claim

A businesswoman has dragged an insurance company, Millennium Insurance Company Limited, to court for allegedly refusing to pay her insurance claims.

It is the case of Mrs Akosua Sarpong Ayisa that the insurance company has decided not to pay for the stocks in her warehouse which got burnt although she had signed onto a fire insurance policy offered by the company.

In her writ filed at the Commercial Division of the Accra High Court by her counsel, Mr Gary Nimako Marfo, the businesswoman avers that Millennium Insurance has agreed to pay for only the cost of renovation of the warehouse which is against the tenets of the insurance policy that she subscribed to.

Reliefs

Mrs Ayisa is using her legal action to recover the sum of Gh?491,415 being the total cost of the stock in the shop.

She also wants the recovery of Gh?169, 672.20 which is the amount Millennium Insurance has agreed to pay for the renovation of the damaged building.

She is further seeking costs, including legal fees.

Fire outbreak

Mrs Ayisa who deals in florals avers in her statement of claim that officers of Millennium Insurance Company convinced her to sign onto a fire insurance policy for five of her properties including residential, a shop and a warehouse.

The statement of claim explained that parts of the warehouse, located at Tseado near the Trade Fair Centre in Accra, were destroyed during a fire outbreak on January 8, 2019.

The fire, the statement of claim added, led to the destruction of part of the building, office equipment, stock of the floral products, plant and machinery, among other items.

She avers that officers of Millennium Insurance visited the damaged property on four occasions and also sent an insurance assessor to assess the extent of the destruction.

“On February 23, 2019, the defendant’s officers came and carted away stock, some of which were partially destroyed, non-destroyed and destroyed valued at Gh?419, 415,” the statement of claim stated.

“Refusal to pay”

However, it is the case of Mrs Ayisa that Millennium Insurance wrote to her on March 29, 2019 that it was only liable to pay the cost of the building renovation which was Gh?169,657.20 and that it would not pay for the cost of the stock because it was not covered by the insurance policy.

“The defendant represented to the plaintiff that indeed the building and the stock were insured and it was for that reason that she did not raise any protest or objection when the defendant officers took away all her stock,” the statement of claim stated.

The plaintiff explained that on April 16, 2019, she made her lawyers to write to Millennium Insurance demanding full payment for her stock, but the company denied liability and insisted on paying for only the renovation of the building.