Top judge urges financials to show ‘compassion’

The President of the High Court has said it should not be "impossible" for financial organisations to show "empathy and understanding" in situations such as where a man diagnosed with heart disease got no payment from his insurer, despite having critical illness cover for conditions including heart attack and stroke.

Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said it seemed to him that “justice would warrant a restitution” of some degree of the payments made by the “hard-working Philomena and Thomas Geoghegan over 11 years under their joint policy taken out with Progressive Life Assurance in 1998.

Counsel for the company, now Irish Life Assurance plc, said the claim is a reinsured claim and wanted time to take instructions from a reinsurer based overseas.

The judge stressed he was not implying any mis-selling but rather perhaps an unconscionable bargain.

In those circumstances, the judge told Mrs Geoghegan, representing herself, he was adjourning her proceedings in which she was challenging the Financial Services Ombudsman’s rejection of her complaint arising from the refusal of the insurer to pay out. The ombudsman denies her claims and says she is relying on materials not put before him when he was dealing with the complaint.

The matter will return to court in three weeks when, the judge told Mrs Geoghegan, he hoped there would be “some good news”.

In an affidavit and letters, Mrs Geoghegan, a carer, from Ring, Tyrellspass, Co Westmeath, said she and her husband sought a mortgage in May 1998 to build a house and part of the process involved a representative for Progressive Life Assusrance coming out to their mobile home.

She said they had filled out forms concerning how much life and illness cover they would need to cover their debts and any loss of salary into the future. She said life cover began in June 1998 and illness and life cover began in July 1999. Their house was built in December 1999, she added.

She said the insurance plan was paid up to date when she put in a claim for her husband to Irish Life after he became ill in late 1998 and was unable to work. He was later diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. She said their claim was turned down on grounds the illness was not included in their policy.

In correspondence to Mrs Geoghegan, Irish Life said the illness suffered by her husband did not meet the criteria for heart attack under the definition set out in the policy.