AXA Assurances agrees to indemnify several hundred restaurant owners. – SYSPEO / SIPA
The La Rochelle commercial court condemned the insurance giant Axa a few days ago to compensate three restaurants in Charente-Maritime for their operating losses caused by the first two containments of the Covid-19 crisis.
Axa France is ordered to pay a total of 526,000 euros to these establishments for administrative closures decided by the government during the first epidemic wave last spring, between March 15 and June 2, 2020 and during the second wave, between November 2020 and January 2021.
The Resto Ensemble collective, created in March 2020, hailed “a new victory”. The restaurants “La Bella Donna en Ville” in La Rochelle, “La Bella Donna Origine” in Aytré and the establishment “Chai Nous Comme Chai Vous” in La Flotte on the island of Ré claimed 356,700 euros, 128,000 euros and 77,300 respectively. euros. In its contract, the insurer provided that the guarantee was “extended” following an “administrative closure” when this was the consequence in particular of a “contagious disease” or an “epidemic”.
Axa denounces “a prejudicial legal confusion for all”
However, there was an exclusion, when “at least one other establishment” is the subject in the same department of “an administrative closure measure, for an identical cause”, a formulation which covers the scope of the current epidemic. Axa has always maintained in court that “the clause in the standard contract clearly excludes compensation for loss of operations” linked to the Covid-19 epidemic.
However, for the court, “the contradiction is obvious”: such an exclusion clause, whereas an epidemic “by definition” is “uncontrollable” (…) “renders the guarantee inoperative and thus empties it of its content”. Axa “must assume the consequences of a confused contradictory drafting, no one being able to take advantage of his own turpitude”, affirm the magistrates, noting also the insufficient formalism of the clause and a lack of “obligation to advise”.
According to Axa, this litigation leads to “judicial confusion prejudicial to all”, with at first instance one third of decisions favorable to all insurers, as in Bordeaux on January 11 in another Axa case, against two thirds favorable to policyholders.