A Sydney man has been denied an insurance payout of over half million dollars after the court found the man had his friend deliberately set the property alight.
The insurer refused Sachin Sharma’s claim for $ $466,252 for the home and $60,637 for contents in 2012 after the property was destroyed in a fire in June 2012.
The insurance provider said there was evidence Mr Sharma’s friend Jai Sen deliberately lit the fire and his phone was discovered at the scene.
Mr Sen’s phone records showed he spoke to Mr Sharma just minutes before neighbours called 000 to report the fire.
Mr Sen claimed he had lost his phone the year before, but there were records of him calling and texting his girlfriend in Fiji twelve times on the day the fire destroyed Mr Sharma’s property.
Subsequent investigation showed a liquid hydrocarbon accelerant had been applied throughout the house. When the police arrived, there was no evidence of pre-fire forced entry.
Mr Sharma sued the insurer NRMA and the NSW District Court ruled against him in February this year.
“There was a substantial windfall payment in play, in the absence of there being any other rational basis for Mr Sen to have started the fire, applying the … principles for finding adverse inferences, permits the objective evidence to persuade me of [Mr Sharma’s] motivation and his connivance with Mr Sen in Mr Sen starting the fire. In other words, that [Mr Sharma] knowingly consented to Mr Sen starting the fire”, District Court Judge Robert Montgomery said.
Sharma also deleted five contacts, including Mr Sen’s, from his phone while the proceedings were still on.
Despite the evidence, Mr Sharma maintained his denial of deleting the contacts which Judge Montgomery described as “unreliable and probably untruthful”.
Mr Sharma who operates a financial services business in Sydney appealed against the District Court’s finding that his motive “was to make a windfall profit” and that the court had erred in not finding that he had no motive to arrange for the fire.
On Friday, the NSW Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal filed on eighteen grounds, including that the District Court judge had erred in ruling that he was involved in the destruction of the property.
“The evidence points clearly to Mr Sen having used the [Phone] at the time and place of the fire to speak to Mr Sharma, who was using [his phone]. The compelling inference in those circumstances is that [Mr Sharma] consented to the lighting of the fire,” Justice Anthony Meagher said.
The appeal was dismissed with costs.
