A COUPLE made the unprecedented move of demanding that an insurer pay for the woman's fertility treatment after their two sons died in a car accident.

It led to a series of court appearances, with the lawyer for the insurance company arguing at an appeal yesterday that the couple's attempts to conceive were 'doomed from the start'.

Mr Man Mohan Singh, 51, and Madam Jasbir Kaur, 48, had spent nearly $33,000 on medical procedures to conceive a child.

They resorted to this after their only children - sons Gurjiv Singh, 17, and Pardip Singh, 14 - died after the boys were flung out of a rented car when it crashed into a tree on Dec 2, 2002.

The car driver, Dilveer Singh Gill, fled days before he was to be charged and is still at large.

Monday's case was heard before a three-judge Court of Appeal.

The insurer's lawyer, Mr Ramasamy Chettiar, argued against what he described as paving the way for indefinite liability for car insurers.

'If we allow this, there will be no end,' he said.

If fertility treatments failed and parents turned to alternative methods like cloning or cryonics, insurers would be asked to foot the bill.

Moreover, he said, the couple in this case were unreasonable as they had gone ahead with the treatment despite its low likelihood of success.

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.