Atan Mustaffa Yussof Ahmad J:

Introduction

[1] Here is a tale stranger than fiction, yet grimly real. Abdul Razak Bin Noor Mohamad approaches an insurance agent with a most peculiar and specific question: "What if there's an accidental death from falling off a building?" The agent, perhaps thinking nothing of it, confirms he would be covered. Abdul Razak then takes out a policy on his life - a substantial policy worth millions. Twenty days later, he falls from the 17th floor of a building and dies. The agent herself testified that such a targeted question was rather unusual for someone buying a policy. Yet for all its dramatic peculiarity, this case does not turn on these extraordinary circumstances alone, but on the more prosaic - though no less vital - questions of what the contract says and what it means.

[2] The law of insurance, like all good law, must look beyond the sensational to the fundamental: what did the parties agree? On one side stands the adopted son - the Plaintiff who trusted that this policy would provide security - clutching the certificate document and pointing to its plain terms which promise payment upon accidental death. On the other side stands the mig