Throwback Thursday: Hiccupping claim & women driver claims
Insurance Post’s Throwback Thursday steps back in time to July 1970 to remind you what was going on this week in insurance history, when the courts ruled an insurer had to pay a claim from a hiccupping policyholder and the AA made claims about women drivers.
30 July 1970: Hiccupping claim
A Superior Court jury ruled the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company had to pay a claim made by a man who had hiccupped on and off for 40 years.
The 57-year-old said he had lost jobs because customers thought his hiccups were caused by “a nip from the bottle”.
The jury ordered the insurer to pay £225 in disability payments to him each month until he reached the age of 65, and to give him £4,120 in back payments.
AA makes claims about women drivers
Women drivers are “not the blind, dangerous, homicidal terrors of the road [that] men say they are”, according to the Automobile Association.
Post reported that the AA found a woman driver has a one-in-10 chance of crashing in the first year after taking her test, against a man’s one-in-five chance.
The AA observed this was because a “woman’s attitude is more careful and possessive, the man’s is full of risk, in more ways than one”.
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