Ewe won’t believe these insurance claims

OF ALL the claims paid out by an insurance company over the years, one for a sheep jumping through a shop window has to be among the most bizarre.

In 1960, a payout was made to a shop owner after the misguided animal took a flying leap through the plate glass window of a showroom, breaking it before fleeing.

And in a case dating from 1878, a hotel keeper in London suffered a blow to the eye from the cork of a champagne bottle he was opening. He successfully claimed £25 and ten shillings – or £20,120 in today’s money.

Insurance company Aviva has revealed a list of unusual but valid claims it has dealt with as it marks 325 years in business.

Other quirky claims paid out include one from 1961, from an unlucky dentist who was kicked out of a window by a patient coming round from an anaesthetic.

The company has also paid out over some of the most notorious and tragic episodes in Britain’s history. It insured some of the banknotes stolen in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, when a gang of thieves including Ronnie Biggs robbed a Royal Mail train which was en route to London. Aviva paid out £1,091,340 and ten shillings – or £59million in today’s money.

And in 1984, a claim was paid over the delay caused to a fishmonger’s van which was caught up in the siege at the Libyan embassy in London following the fatal shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher. The van was parked nearby and could not be moved until the 11-day siege ended – by which time the fish had rotted.

Among the offbeat claims was a payout for a young apprentice’s clothes that were ‘ruined’ while he was working with a group of farm workers who were carrying sheets of corrugated iron during high winds. A gust lifted the small employee and his sheet, carrying him across the yard, only to drop him in a liquid manure storage tank.

In 1906, there was a £1,000 claim over a fire in the warehouse of whisky merchant James Watson & Co in Dundee. Rivers of burning whisky reportedly flowed through the city.

In 1975 another whisky firm put in a claim for missing alcohol – which it later emerged was being syphoned off by an electrician.

Nick Major of Aviva said: ‘We’ve seen the strangest and most unusual claims, which goes to show that planning for the unexpected is good business practice.’