Wilful misconduct of the assured and his servants in marine insurance

Wang, Guijun (1991) Wilful misconduct of the assured and his servants in marine insurance. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

It has long been established that an assured can not recover for a loss which was attributable to his wilful misconduct. Effect is given to this principle by section 55(2)(a) of the Marine Insurance Act 1906.

Cases of wilful misconduct of the assured are many. But it did not seem to have received much of the attention of the courts until the 1920s, 1930s and the 1970s when the world faced economic difficulties and many ships were scuttled by or with the consent of the assured/shipowners to secure the insurance money and thus to escape from financial ruin. While these cases and many others have settled certain issues, they have raised and yet left unsolved some others which are of particular importance but in respect of which the law is not clear at the moment.

It is, therefore, the purpose of this thesis to revisit this corner of the law and examine some issues connected with the wilful misconduct of the assured and his servants. It is to discuss, in particular, these issues including: the meaning of the term 'wilful misconduct' as used in s.55(2)(a); the burden of proof to be assumed by each party and the standard of that proof; the real scope of coverage of some important and relevant perils relied upon by the assured; the determination of proximate cause of the loss and, the impact of such wilful misconduct on the right of recovery by a third party.

It is hoped that the inquiries conducted herein could provide the very basis for any further study on this area of the law in the future.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics