Vasil Kisil & Partners Successfully Represents UNIQA Insurance Company in Agricultural Insurance Dispute

Vasil Kisil & Partners’ lawyers have successfully represented UNIQA Insurance Company in a dispute over payment of an insurance indemnity in connection with a low crop yield caused by drought.

Following the litigation that lasted over three and a half years, the court dismissed the insured’s claims for recovery of the insurance indemnity as the insured had failed to fulfill a number of agrotechnical requirements for growing barley, which had caused reduction in crop productivity and resulted in the lower crop yield than expected. The Superior Commercial Court of Ukraine affirmed the lawfulness and validity of findings of the court of appeals and upheld the resolution of the court of appeals.

“Agricultural insurance disputes are difficult to handle because it is difficult to prove the causes of crop loss (or low crop yield) as this may be the result of both adverse weather conditions and failure to follow an agricultural crop growing process. It is also not so easy to establish the time when the insured event occurred. This is mainly because, based on the agricultural insurance practices, the time of occurrence of an insured event does not coincide with the time when the insured event is discovered. Losses incurred by an agricultural producer as a result of the crop loss or low crop yield can usually be identified only when harvesting the crop. However, an insured event occurs at the moment when losses are incurred rather than identified," says Oleg Kachmar, counsel of Vasil Kisil & Partners.

Vasil Kisil & Partners’ project team included Andriy Stelmashchuk, managing partner, Oleg Kachmar, counsel, and Yuriy Kolos, associate.

UNIQA Insurance Group entered the Ukrainian market in 2006. Today, UNIQA and UNIQA Life Insurance Companies whose head offices are based in Kyiv offer all kinds of life and non-life insurance services through a nationwide network. Over 1 thousand employees of UNIQA in Ukraine serve nearly 1.2 million policyholders. UNIQA Insurance Group is one of the leading insurance groups in its core markets of Austria and Central and Eastern Europe. UNIQA consists of 40 companies based in 19 countries.