Since 2014, Aang had rented a storage unit in Auckland and used it to store musical instruments and equipment. In April 2019, Aang took out $10,000 of contents insurance cover for six months under a master policy held by the storage facility.
On 4 June 2019, Aang visited his storage unit and discovered that several items were missing. He made a police report the next day, explaining that he thought that someone had been able to reach in, grab the items, and pull them through a gap between the top of the storage unit and the ceiling.
Aang made a claim to his insurer for the cost of the stolen items. The insurer declined the claim because Aang hadn’t been able to show that there had been a “theft following violent and forcible entry to or exit from” his storage unit, as required by his insurance policy.
Aang complained to FSCL.
Dispute
The insurer explained that there were several “red flags” with Aang’s claim, including that Aang got insurance for only six months after already having the unit for 5 years, and he made the claim shortly after his insurance started. The insurer noted that the gap at the top of the unit was 26cm wide but was obstructed by a pipe, making two gaps of about 13cm each side. The insurer said that it was unlikely that the stolen items could fit through such a small gap and there was no proof of forcible entry into the unit.
Aang said that his insurance claim should have been accepted. He said that the storage facility set the length of the policy term, not him, and that the pipe had clearly been bent downwards to make more space to pull the items out, and then pushed back into place leaving a ‘sag’. Aang said that photographs of the unit and the police and the insurer’s investigations didn’t show the whole picture. He said that the thieves had broken the metal latch off a guitar case because it was pulled out of the unit with such force, which met the “violent and forceful” requirement in the policy. However, there was no reference to the broken latch in the police report, or when Aang first reported the theft to the police.
Review
We looked at photos of the storage unit taken by the police only a few weeks after Aang had reported the theft, and the photos taken by Aang and the assessor three months later. The photos taken by the police did not show a sag in the pipe, but the ones taken by Aang, and the assessor did. We placed weight on the police photos, being the ones taken closest in time to the alleged theft. Because these photos showed no sag, we did not think there was enough evidence that someone had pulled down the pipe to make a bigger gap to get the items out.
We decided there was insufficient evidence to show that it was more likely that not that the stolen items could have been pulled out of the top of the storage unit through the small gap of approximately 13cm. There wasn’t enough evidence to show that there had been “violent and forceful” entry as required by the policy. We found that the insurer had correctly declined the claim and recommended that Aang discontinue his complaint.
Resolution
Aang did not agree with FSCL’s review and requested time to gather information to support his complaint. FSCL closed his complaint until we hear further from Aang.
Insights
This case highlights the ‘burden of proof’ and the ‘standard of proof’ when assessing complaints. In this case we had to assess whether Aang had met the requirement of the ‘insuring clause’, that there had been ‘violent and forcible entry or exit’ from the storage unit. The burden of proof was on Aang – because an insured has to meet an insuring clause in a policy. We also only had to assess the available evidence at the standard of ‘a balance of probabilities’, being whether it was more likely than not that the items could have been taken through the 13cm gap. There didn’t need to be evidence which showed ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that the items could not have been taken through the 13cm gap, for us to find that Aang had not met the insuring clause.
