Description

About the Event

This presentation will focus on the developments in English insurance (including marine insurance) and reinsurance law in the last 12 months. This period has witnessed a large number of insurance and reinsurance disputes many of which brought questions before the courts that had not been judicially determined before. In a reinsurance dispute the courts for the first time clarified the meaning of ‘catastrophe’ and the application of the ‘hours clauses’ in the context of Covid-19. The care that must be observed in the selection of the standard market wordings was also illustrated through a reinsurance dispute. The courts further clarified whether an excess of loss cover could be regarded as ‘underinsurance’, reiterated the meaning of ‘seizure’ and brokers’ duties to their clients and ruled that the damages against the brokers can be assessed on the loss of chance basis. The enforcement of conditions precedent to insurer’s liability under the Insurance Act 2015 was also discussed. Marine insurance disputes included the assured’s duty of disclosure and the duty to mitigate the loss, the assured’s knowledge when the assured is a company, fortuity, the enforcement of the ‘pay first’ clause in the P&I club rules, damages for late payment by the insurers, ransom, general average and physical v pure economic loss. Numerous cases continued to discuss the business interruption losses suffered due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The courts reiterated the causation test applied in assessing such claims as well as the meaning of the aggregation word ‘occurrence’ and how the losses will be aggregated in composite policies.

About the Speaker

Özlem Gürses is Professor of Commercial Law at King’s College London. She specialises in insurance and reinsurance law. Professor Gürses is the sole author of Marine Insurance Law (Routledge, 2023, 3rd ed), The Law of Compulsory Motor Vehicle Insurance (Informa, 2019), and Reinsuring Clauses (Informa, 2010). She edited the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Marine Insurance Law (2024), co-edited Insurability of Emerging Risks: Law, Theory and Practice (Hart, 2025), and is currently editing Vol 4, Marine Insurance Law, Edward Elgar Encyclopedia of Maritime and Oceans Law.

Professor Gürses regularly presents her research at home and abroad. She sits on the Presidential Council of International Insurance Law Association/Association Internationale de Droit des Assurances (AIDA), chairs the Reinsurance Working Party of AIDA, and is Vice-Chair of the British Insurance Law Association Committee.