Originally published in The Insurance Law Quarterly Review: Winter 2005
The Third Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2001) confirms the broad scientific consensus that climate change is already occurring and will continue. The balance of evidence suggests that the cause is the increasing concentration of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
Some governments have already begun to respond. Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are now bound to reduce their combined emissions of greenhouse gases by at least five per cent from 1990 levels. In the EU, a carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme (the "EU ETS") was set up this year as part of an effort to curb emissions from certain industrial sectors....
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As Lord Birkenhead LC noted in the famous case of British & Foreign Marine Insurance v Gaunt [1921]2, a policy on "all risks" terms cannot be held simply to cover all damage howsoever caused "for such damage as is inevitable from ordinary wear and tear … is not within the policies".
In our previous Law-Now "Insurance law reform: consultation on brokers' liability for premium" we explained that the Law Commission had published a summary of the responses received to its consultation on reform of section 53(1) of the Marine Insurance Act 1906.
At a time when all participants in the financial market are bracing themselves to face important challenges, the Court of Justice of the European Union has added an extra hurdle for insurers across Europe – in a decision delivered earlier on last year, the Court ruled that as from 21 December 2012, insurers may no longer discriminate between male and female customers in terms of insurance premiums and benefits.
In February 2011 we reported on the judgment of the English Commercial Court in Teal Assurance v WR Berkley & Aspen, a case which demonstrated the tensions that can arise in cases involving insurance programmes consisting of more than one layer of cover.
In Omega Proteins Ltd v Aspen Insurance UK Ltd [2010] EWHC 2280,
10 September 2010, is a case which explores what happens when a
policy of liability insurance contains an exclusion in respect of
liability arising under a contract, "unless such liability
would have attached in the absence of that contract".
Banks quite naturally have a concern to ensure that the properties on which loans (of whatever scale) are secured retain their value and so generally require borrowers to insure the property against all the usual risks.
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