In theory, insurance is a fine thing: it gives you the good feeling of being covered in an emergency, even if you hardly ever use it in practice.
After all, they only apply to emergencies, to situations that you can imagine but that occur rarely enough.
Thousands of innkeepers who have taken out “business closure insurance” in recent years must have felt the same way.
They could trust that in the event of a sudden, unexpected closure of their restaurant, part of their earnings would be reimbursed by insurance.
After all, a pub like this is expensive: even if the customers stay away, the rent is still due.
And what to do if the health department comes and the restaurant has to close?
Corinna Budras
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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Phillip Krohn
Editor in business, responsible for "People and Business".
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For almost two years now, the corona pandemic has been one of those rare exceptional cases in which an emergency occurs and the benefits of such insurance first have to be proven.
The Federal Court of Justice will hear such a case next Wednesday, which is about the special case of one of these "business closure insurances".
It's just not about an unfortunate individual case, a dispute between a single restaurateur from Lübeck, but about a mass phenomenon.
The judges in Karlsruhe now have to clarify very fundamentally what is to come for the entire industry.
Fighting an abstract danger
The plaintiff's wish is quite simply described: he wants the insurer to be obliged to keep his promise.
After all, in the contract he had promised to pay him compensation if he was forced to close his shop.
Nothing else had happened in spring 2020, when the Schleswig-Holstein state government asked all restaurants and pubs to close their bars indefinitely.
The insurers, on the other hand, take the position they often take: the insurance is simply not intended for this specific case.
The innkeeper has had little success in court so far.
The Lübeck Regional Court dismissed the lawsuit, as did the Higher Regional Court.
The arguments of the lawyers sound conclusive, but can only make the innkeepers despair.
The concluded contract refers to a "specific, individual measure" that is necessary to combat a risk of infection that "exactly arises from the specific company".
But that's exactly what doesn't exist here: after all, the respective state governments hadn't closed the bars because specific corona cases had been proven, but to combat an abstract danger.
the corona virus,
at that time still completely unknown, was not even covered by the terms and conditions.
The judges decided that this must also be clear to a “reasonable policyholder”.
Now the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe should help.
Hearings will be held for the first time on Wednesday, and the verdict will probably not be made for a few weeks.
The case affects an entire industry
In order to understand the explosive nature of the procedure, however, you have to look at the entire industry: business interruption insurance only covers a small sub-segment of property-casualty insurance.
The industry has just collected a low double-digit million euro amount in premiums for its coverage - with a total of 75 billion euros in this segment in 2020. Insurers have repeatedly emphasized it publicly: this premium income was not calculated in such a way that all innkeepers and compensate hoteliers.
Pandemics are not covered, said Allianz boss Bäte several times.
"The risk is uninsurable."