More than 30 years ago, in 1984, a divided New York Court of Appeals decided in Barker v. Kallash that a person who committed an illegal act of a serious nature should not be able to profit from that wrongdoing.1 By 1997, the court, in Manning v. Brown, seemed to have no doubt about this rule, unanimously declaring that a plaintiff’s “knowing participation” in a serious violation of the law precluded her recovery for injuries resulting from that conduct.2 Since then, numerous other courts in New York have relied on Barker and Manning to deny recovery to plaintiffs who had engaged in a wide variety of different illegal acts.3
People who engage in insurance fraud similarly have to deal with the consequences. That’s because, in New York, both the common law and the Insurance Law permit an insurance carrier to rescind or void a life or property insurance policy where a material misrepresentation was made at the time of the procurement of the policy.4
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