By order AC6958-2024, issued on December 13, 2024, the Civil, Agrarian, and Rural Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (hereinafter, the "SCJ") dismissed a cassation appeal filed by an insurer that had been sued in a civil liability case.

In support of its cassation appeal, the insurer argued that the appellate court had imposed a requirement not contemplated in Article 184, paragraph 2, letter (c) of Decree 663 of 1993 (Organic Law of the Financial System). According to the insurer, this provision merely requires that coverages and exclusions be presented in highlighted characters. However, in its view, the court exceeded the proper interpretation of this provision by requiring that these elements be specifically emphasized through boldface or underlining.

The SCJ rejected this argument and emphasized that the insurance contract was drafted entirely in uppercase letters, making it difficult to effectively distinguish the exclusions from the rest of the clauses. Consequently, it concluded that the exclusions did not meet the requirement of being highlighted in a way that would allow the insured to clearly identify them in contrast to the rest of the contractual terms.

"Now, although the defendant argued in this challenge that the appellate judge improperly assessed the referenced insurance contract by disregarding the fact that it does contain the coverages and exclusions in 'highlighted characters'—since they were written in uppercase letters—it failed to demonstrate the factual error and its relevance.

In this regard, it should be recalled that the Tribunal found this requirement to be unfulfilled because, given that the entire policy was drafted in uppercase letters, the exclusion set forth in letter (d) of paragraph 6 of the special conditions did not feature any sign or marking to differentiate it from the rest of the text, «as would have been the case with the use of bold, underlined, or italicized letters, or a larger font size for the words.»"

If you wish to consult order AC6958-2024 of December 13, 2024, click here.