Insurance Fraud and the Role of the Civil Law

CASE STUDY
CONTRACT LAW AND CORPORATIONS ACT 2001 (Cth)

CASE STUDY 1
FACTS:
One day, five years ago, a man introduced himself as Trevor Hunt. He was specialized in finding antiques for
museums. The man looked like the photograph he had seen of the person. He had shown some coins and
hence, the museum granted the fund of 200,000$ to the man for the expedition. Only later, it was found that
the man was an imposter and a real person named Trevor Hunt was in Amazon Forest.

ISSUE:
 The issue in the case is whether the museum would succeed in a civil
action against the conman to recover the money that it paid him on the
grounds of:
Common law
Statutory law

RULES: Common Law:
 Fraud is Intentional Deception to gain unlawful and unfair benefits or even
withdraw the victim of his or her legal rights. The key feature of fraud is that the
act would have been conducted dishonestly and with deceptive intent.
 There are four elements of fraud:
1) Statement made which is materially false.
2) Intention to deceive the victim.
3) Act of the victim relying upon the statements of the person acting fraudulently.
4) Damages being caused.
 Remedies for fraud is rescission of the act which was committed with fraudulent
intention like that of an agreement, contract or transaction, recovery of
compensation amount for harm being caused, punitive damages against the
person engaging in fraudulent activities and so on.