The case of Mitchell Starc's bid to claim of $1.53 million payout for a million-dollar lost IPL deal with the Kolkata Knight Riders after missing the league's 2018 edition has seen a new twist.
The opposition lawyers have claimed that the Aussie left-arm pacer's leg injury was not a "sudden or unexpected event".
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Starc filed a lawsuit in the Victorian County Court in April last year against the insurers of his contract to play for KKR in the cash-rich event.
The 30-year-old was bagged at the auction for that season for a sum of $1.8 million. However, just before he could arrive in India, the speedster fractured his right tibial bone while playing the contentious Cape Town Test on the tour of South Africa.
Starc, represented by Mills Oakley Lawyers, is suing a syndicate of Lloyd's of London, which is a longstanding insurance market where coverage can be bought for unique circumstances that traditional insurers don't offer security for.
Expected to last upto three days, the civil trial that was due on the matter for March 30 has now been postponed until June 17.
Clyde and Co lawyers, representing Lloyd's of London, said Starc was neither owed $1.53 million nor "that the plaintiff suffered a fracture of his right tibial bone" in their fresh documents lodged in the Victorian County Court on February 27.
They further denied that Starc "suffered a bodily injury within meaning of the policy on 10 March 2018", arguing "in so far as the plaintiff may have suffered an injury to his right tibial bone, such injury was the accumulation of a series of accidents and/or traumas occurring" before March 10.
"Prior to 10 March 2018, the plaintiff placed and accumulated stress upon his right tibial bone by ... training for and playing in the first Test ... held on 1 to 5 March 2018, training for the second Test ... and playing in the first day of the second Test," The AGE quoted the amended defence argument.
"Subsequent to 10 March 2018, the plaintiff placed and accumulated stress upon his right tibial bone by playing in the third and fourth days of the second Test ... and training for and playing in the third Test of the Test series held on 22 to 25 March 2018."
Starc, however, maintains that the injury issue began in the previous Test in Port Elizabeth "on uneven footmarks on a worn wicket" before the injury aggravated at Newlands, when the pacer "suffered a grade three tibial injury, which involved a fracture in his right tibial bone".
The quick has also signed an accident report form, with Australian team doctor Richard Saw also endorsing his claim in a statement.
No comment was offered by Mills Oakley and Clyde and Co lawyers.
(Inputs from The AGE)
