Conventional improvement and temporary scope of the insured risk: the precedence of the agreements in collective insurance

Abstract

There are many collective agreements that include improvements recognising supplementary compensations to social security benefits, and it is also common that the collective agreement obliges the company to arrange a collective insurance to ensure the coverage of these payments. However, the fact that private insurance has been arranged does not imply that the private company always pays such compensation. This is because the policy must identify the insured risk and the temporary scope of the coverage offered, and the agreement should determine whether the company pays or does not pay the increase. Notwithstanding the above, it must also address the circumstances and verify whether the willingness of the contracting parties was to ensure the risks incompletely or not. It should, therefore, be taken into account that the insurance policy must be a transparent contract, without confusing clauses, and that this confusion, as it is a standard-form agreement, should not harm the policyholder (the company). The plenary of the High Court, in a controversial announcement, ruled that two insurance policies agreed successively between the company and two different insurance companies do not include the coverage of the increase claimed by the worker, in view of the classification that both policies contain, where both exclude the claimed coverage. In contrast, in the dissenting vote that the ruling incorporates, the five discrepant judges argue that the policyholder should have been protected, since the policy contained limiting clauses.