Insurance contract law in the Israeli judicial system

By GUY COHEN
(photo credit: RF123)
(photo credit: RF123)
When one has a conflict with an Israeli insurance company, the only statue relevant is the Israeli insurance contract law act (1981), that was designed to be the base for every litigation which guides the court and the parties involved.
"While this is true, the most valuable factors for the insured party will be the decisions and guidelines of the insurance commissioner, the representative of the minister of finance" Advocate Guy Cohen, insurance claims specialist told The Jerusalem Post. "If you are the insured and you feel the insurance company treats you wrong and does not compensate you in the sum of money you are entitled to, a good advice will be to look for help in the insurance commissioner web site".
In this site you can find similar cases to yours in which the Israeli insurance commissioner already ruled, and once there is a ruling in your case's favor you can of course easily rely upon it.
One can also submit a complaint to the insurance commissioner. The Israeli court has given validation to the insurance commissioner's decisions time after time again to the point that no insurance company claims today that it does not bind it.
The insurance commissioner created some guidelines in the past, which time and time again proves to be what the court rely on when it decides on favor of a plaintiff. In my firm's everyday practice, I refer to the insurance commissioner's decisions regularly as my guidelines which bind the insurance company and forces its hand to pay the plaintiff the compensation he asks for. Since we represent the plaintiffs who do not get the compensation they are entitled to from the insurer, we are often assisted by those decisions.
A good example can be found in litigation involving cases in which the insurance company will not acknowledge a claim made on a nursing policy. Those policies are meant to provide the insured a monthly pay when he is not able to manage on his own, based on 6 fundamental functions of everyday life, called by the initials A.D.L.
There are numerous decisions which help the insured to get compensation even in cases where the explicit demands in the policy are not met. As an example you can find there the guideline to acknowledge a case in which the insured do not have any organic deficiency which prevents him from controlling his urine, but because of difficulty in walking ability to arrives to the toilets not fast enough, what causes a urine spill.
Another field in which I use those decisions almost every time I appeal to court is life insurance. In this field too, there are also endless cases in which the Insurance commissioner has ruled in the past and a great number of guidelines which bind the Israeli insurance companies from which I drive my winnings for my costumers.
A good example in that area are the guidelines which bind the insurer to document and save the documentation of the process in which a new policy is formed. It is important on all cases in which there is a crucial difference between what the insured thought he purchased, i.e, what the salesman promised, and what is actually written down in the policy papers handed out to the insurer a considerable time after the sales meeting.


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