Marine Insurance Warranties. Development in England, in comparison with other countries

Abstract

A development of a status of marine insurance warranties in the English law has been a lengthy process. Since the XVIII century, the English insurance warranty regime was governed by such rigid rules, as: the strict compliance doctrine, the absolute character of warranties, disregard to materiality or causative character of a breach and irrelevance of a future rectification. A unique remedy of automatic discharge from liability , introduced by the MIA 1906 s 33(3), made the warranty regime even more beneficial to insurers and detrimental to assureds. In practice, this disproportion resulted in that the insurer was entitled to rely on an irrelevant breach of warranty to refuse a cover. Moreover, as the warranty regime is strikingly different from a general civil law approach to alteration of risk, its maintenance has become a hindrance for a process of internationalization of the English insurance law. Therefore, English courts and the insurance industry endeavored to mitigate harsh effects of warranties. Various measures of amelioration were adopted, but none of them could be described as a finale solution. In 2006, the UK Law Commission jointly with the Scottish Law Commission started a project Insurance Contract Law . The project concluded with an adaptation of the Insurance Act 2015, which envisaged significant changes of the warranty regime. This thesis intends to analyze the historical premises, the aims and the content of this reform, as well as its results: for instance, has the English insurance law solution became closer to approaches adopted in other civil law and/or common law countries? The main method of the research is a comparative analysis of the classical warranty regime in England, its alterations, introduced by the recent reform and the relevant approaches in other common and civil law countries. In conclusion, a summary of the development of the warranty regime and a brief outlook on future perspectives of warranties in the English marine insurance law are given.