A basis clause in insurance requires truthfulness in disclosures; inaccuracies allow for policy repudiation, irrespective of their materiality.

[1] This appeal is against the decision of the Seremban High Court dated 21 August 2013 in allowing the respondent's claim as nominee of one Devadas a/l Anthony Samey ("deceased") under four policies issued to the deceased by the appellant.

[2] The respondent was the plaintiff and the appellant, the defendant at the High Court. For ease of reference, parties will be referred to as they were in the High Court.

Brief Facts

[3] The facts in this case are very simple. Approximately, two months before his death, the deceased took out insurance policies with three companies, namely the defendant in the sum of RM1,086,000.00, Allianz in the sum of RM500,000.00 and Maybank Takaful in the sum of RM150,000.00, making a total insured value of approximately RM1.75 million.

[4] The policies issued by the defendant to the deceased were as follows:

(Hereinafter referred to as "the policies")

[5] In all the policies with the three companies, the plaintiff was named as the nominee.

[6] On 4 April 2007, the deceased was apparently killed in a hit-and-run accident involving a lorry while riding a motorcycle borrowed from a coworker. The driver of the lorry that was allegedly involved in the accident was never found.

[7] The plaintiff, in his capacity as the nominee in all the policies, filed his claim for the insured sum with the three insurance companies.

[8] However, all three insurance companies, relying on the opinion of two different handwriting experts, repudiated the respective policies on the main ground that the deceased person's signature on the proposal form was not his genuine signature.

[9] The plaintiff then filed three separate suits claiming for the insured sums against the three insurance companies at the Seremban High Court. The suits were subsequently consolidated.

[10] Allianz and Maybank Takaful subsequently entered into a consent judgment with the plaintiff for the sum of RM250,000.00 and RM75,000.00 respectively. The suit against the defendant went on for full trial.

Defence

[11] At the High Court, the main defences ran by the defendant to repudiate the policies were: (1) fraud ie collusion or connivance between the deceased and the insurance agent who sold the policies to the deceased, identified as SD7 during the trial; (2) false or incorrect answers to questions in the Proposal Form furnished by the deceased which breached the basis clause in the policies; and (3) forgery of the deceased person's signature on the Summary Information Sheet, Nomination Form and Proposal Form, all of which rendered the policies null and void and unenforceable against the defendant.

[12] During the trial, the plaintiff called two witnesses, ie the plaintiff himself (as SP1) and the deceased person's co-worker and housemate by the name of Vijayakumar a/l Muniandy as SP2 while the defendant called nine witnesses (SD1 to SD9) to prove their respective case and defence.

The High Court's Decision

[13] At the end of the trial, the learned High Court Judge dismissed the defendant's defence and allowed the plaintiff 's claim and awarded to the plaintiff, the insured sum of RM1,091,000.00 under the policies together with interests and costs.

[14] Briefly, the decision of the learned High Court Judge ("learned trial judge") was premised on the following grounds.

(a) The defendant had abandoned the defence of fraud in its submission at the end of the trial. Consequently, fraud is no longer an iss