Ace Insurance dodges fire claim for nine months

Insurance companies are known, when faced with a large claim, to pull every trick in the book to  avoid paying out, or to pay as little as possible. But one company met their unlikely match in eccentric Belgian electronics whizz Jacques Botte, who eventually managed to get paid out – with the help of public loss adjuster Stuart Woodhead.

Deploying their loss adjuster and quantity surveyor to pore over the details of the claim, Ace began prevaricating and set out to prove that Botte was the arsonist of his own building. Meanwhile, a cost estimate of repairs to the building, compiled by loss adjuster at Cunningham Lindsey, Gys van der Laak, totalled the princely sum of R2.1 million.

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