Colinvaux's Law of Insurance

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Description
Colinvaux's Law of Insurance began life as The Law of Insurance: Fire, Life, Accident and Guarantee by William Porter, Henry Darrach and William Feilden Craies, first published in 1889 and consisting of an analysis of "Cases in the English, Scotch, Irish, American and Canadian courts." After eight editions, the last being published in 1933, the work was in 1948 revived and substantially extended by Sidney Preston, who had recently retired from the insurance industry. Sadly, Mr Preston died before the book was published, and practising barrister Raoul Colinvaux, later to take over the editorship of Carver's Carriage of Goods by Sea, completed the manuscript. This was published in 1949 as a new work, The Law of Insurance by Preston and Colinvaux. The work appeared in future editions under Colinvaux's name, and was adapted and expanded to take account of the ever-increasing volume of decided cases and also the abolition of the workers' compensation scheme which had featured in the earlier editions. The final edition prepared by Raoul Colinvaux himself was the fifth, in 1984. The present author "inherited" the work for its sixth edition in 1990, and it has continued to grow substantially with every edition. The book is now much removed from the author's first encounter with Colinvaux's Law of Insurance, the relatively slender third edition, as a student some 40 years ago. Since that date, the number of decided cases just in England has grown incredibly, with much reinsur¬ance litigation finding its way out of arbitration and into the courts, and this is so despite the virtual elimination of judicial decisions in consumer cases following the creation and expansion of the Ombudsman Scheme since 1981. The edition in front of you has developed in two main respects. First, the review of insurance law undertaken by the English and Scottish Eaw Commissions in a project running from the beginning of 2006 until the end of 2014 generated a series of issues papers, reports and consultative documents and, most significantly, the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 and the Insur¬ance Bill 2014-2015 (scheduled to become the Insurance Act 2015. The former measure has abolished the duty of disclosure in consumer cases and has replaced it with a duty to answer questions honestly. That is now in force and is explained in detail. The latter measure, although less extensive than had originally been proposed by the Law Commissions: modernises the law of utmost good faith in business cases; clarifies the law relating to fraudulent claims; and removes the worst features of warranties. It does not, as had been proposed by the Law Com¬missions, reform the law of conditions or impose a duty on insurers to pay dam¬ages where a claim has not been satisfied on time. The changes in the anticipated Insurance Act 2015 will not come into immediate effect, and the old law will remain solely relevant for some time to come (and in life insurance cases, for some decades to come). Nevertheless, the changes are noted at appropriate points in the text. The second development relates to authorities from other jurisdictions. Most of the early "Scotch, Irish, American and Canadian" cases have disappeared over the years, although a smattering has been retained, cited on points on which there is no authority in England. American cases in particular have not been utilised: tak¬ing account of decisions emanating from 50 different jurisdictions, some more sophisticated than others, would render the book of inordinate length and with disproportionate utility. The English courts indeed have indicated on a number of occasions that US authorities are not necessarily of weight. However, this edition
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Contents
part 1    Contract of Insurance
1.    Contract of Insurance
2.    Conflict of Laws
3.    Construction of the Policy
4.    Insurable Interest
5.    The Risk
6.    The duty of Utmost Good Faith
7.    Presentation of the Risk
8.    Terms of Insurance Contracts
9.    The Premium
10.    Claims
11.  Loss and Measure of Indemnity  
12.  The Right of Insures
13.  Statutory Control of Policies
Part 2    The Parties
14.  The Regulation of Insurers
15.  The Assured
16.  Insurance Intermediaries
17.  The Insolvency of Insurance Companies
Part 3    Special Type of Insurance Contract      
18.  Reinsurance
19.  Life and Accident Insurance
20.  Property Insurance
21.  Liability Insurance 
22.  Third Party Rights under Liability Policies 
23.  Motor Vehicle Insurance
24.  Financial Insurance
25.  Marine Insurance
26.  War Risks     
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Author Details
Robert Markin QC, LLD, Professor of law, University of Exeter; Special Counsel, Duncan Cotterill