The Court dismissed both the insured's claim and the insurer's counterclaim, indicating that Chubb failed to discharge its onus of proving on the balance of probabilities, applying the Briginshaw standard, that Mr Richardson deliberately lit the fire at Wirraway. The judgment extensively canvasses the financial circumstances said to constitute motive, including desperate attempts to obtain funding from Ms Baillieu and pressure from the NAB, but the truncated judgment text does not reveal the final conclusion on whether the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to establish arson. The dismissal of the applicant's claim alongside the counterclaim suggests the Court found the evidence finely balanced or that some other basis for denying the claim existed, though the full reasoning on the ultimate issue is not contained in the extracted text.
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