Background
Daniel Yoffe’s apartment suffered fire damage on 9 August 2021. His insurance policy with Migdal Insurance Company Ltd. covered the loss. The insurance company paid 92,000 shekels based on its surveyor’s assessment of the damage. Yoffe claimed he was entitled to higher compensation—specifically, full restoration costs rather than the depreciated value paid—under the policy’s terms. When Migdal rejected his request for additional compensation on 22 September 2022, Yoffe filed a civil claim in Peace Court seeking 153,259 shekels (based on restoration estimates by his own surveyor plus his surveyor’s fees) and alleging bad faith.
The Peace Court rejected most of Yoffe’s claims. The court found that the insurance policy expressly conditioned entitlement to restoration costs on the policyholder actually performing the repairs within one year of the loss. Yoffe had not met this condition—he performed only minimal repairs, not the full restoration work required. The court also found no bad faith by the insurance company and preferred the insurer’s surveyor’s valuation. However, it ordered Migdal to contribute 5,428 shekels toward Yoffe’s surveyor’s fees.
Yoffe appealed to the District Court, which affirmed the Peace Court’s decision on 3 December 2025, finding no error in the lower court’s reasoning or fact-finding. The District Court noted that even Yoffe did not dispute that full repairs were never performed. Yoffe then petitioned the Supreme Court for leave to appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court denied the petition for leave to appeal without requiring a response from Migdal. The court applied the narrow standard governing Supreme Court intervention in third-level review (the so-called “third tier” doctrine), finding that the petition failed to meet it. The court emphasized that the petition was rooted in the specific circumstances of this case and did not raise a principled legal question of general importance.
Judge Daphna Barak-Erez noted that the case presented no serious miscarriage of justice warranting Supreme Court intervention. The lower courts’ decisions were factually grounded—particularly their finding, based on direct observation of witness testimony, that Yoffe had not performed the repairs required by the policy. The District Court had correctly deferred to the lower court’s credibility assessments and fact-finding, and those findings supported the conclusion that the insurance company lawfully denied the claim for restoration costs.
Key Takeaways
- Insurance policies may condition eligibility for restoration costs on actual performance of repairs within a specified period; failure to perform voids that entitlement.
- Insurers’ surveyor assessments receive substantial deference in damage valuations absent evidence of bias or error.
- Allegations of bad faith in insurance dealings require affirmative proof that the insurer actively prevented performance of contractual conditions, not mere denial of a claim.
- Leave to appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court requires a showing of legal principle or serious miscarriage of justice, not merely factual disagreement with lower courts.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the enforceability of restrictive conditions in insurance policies and the high bar for obtaining Supreme Court review. Property insurers can rely on policy provisions requiring actual repairs within set timeframes to limit exposure to restoration-cost claims. The holding protects insurers’ ability to condition certain coverage on policyholder conduct, provided the conditions are clearly stated and consistently enforced. It also confirms that Israeli courts will not second-guess lower courts’ credibility determinations and factual findings about whether a policyholder performed required repairs.
For insureds, the decision is a cautionary reminder that failure to complete repairs within contractually specified periods can forfeit the right to claim restoration costs—even if the policy nominally covers such costs. It underscores that insurance disputes hinge on precise contract performance and that allegations of insurer bad faith require concrete evidence, not inference from the denial itself.