Insurance Law (Excluding Marine Insurance Law)

Description

The course covers the key components of the formation of the insurance contract, claims and the regulation of insurance business and insurance intermediaries. Although it does not cover marine insurance in its own right, reference will be made to the Marine Insurance Act 1906 and to the case-law decided thereunder relevant to non-marine insurance contracts. The course is concerned with English law, but reference will be made to developments in other common law jurisdictions (e.g. the USA, Canada and Australia) in order to see how insurance law issues may receive different judicial/legislative responses elsewhere. You do not need a background in contract law for this course, which is suitable for someone from a non-common law background, but those who do have such a background will be familiar with some aspects (e.g. the analysis of offer and acceptance in the formation of a contract). However, the course not only goes beyond the type of analysis employed by courses on the general principles of contract law (e.g. the course looks at regulation), it will also quickly become clear that an insurance contract has a number of features that mark it out from most other types of contract. For example, it is one of the few contracts where parties are under a duty of utmost good faith.