Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
BOOK REVIEW - THE LAW OF INSURANCE (5TH EDITION)
THE LAW OF INSURANCE (5th Edition) by Raoul Colinvaux, of Gray’s Inn, Barrister. Sweet & Maxwell Ltd., London (1984, xci and 496 pp., plus 27 pp. Appendices and 29 pp. Index). Hardback £42.
Raoul Colinvaux died before this edition went to press, but it is plain that, had he not been suffering from serious illness, the errors and uncertain passages which mar its contents would have been eliminated. Alas, there are printing and grammatical errors throughout. Many are trivial, and serve merely to irritate, but it has to be said that a substantial number of errors confuse or undermine the sense of what is propounded. What, for instance, is to be made of the following passage, in reference to Woolcott v. Excess Insurance [1979] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 231:
Megaw L.J. said that, on inferences rightly drawn by the judge below, one of the broker’s knowledge as to the assured’s record was entirely adequate to prevent the defence of non-disclosure from succeeding. (para. 5–07A)?
Or of this passage:
While a claim for subrogation must be brought in the insurer’s own name. (para. 8–24)?
Or this:
He considered Sturge v. Hackett supra and determined that that the assured were not entitled to recover on the first policy turned however on the principle that the owner/occupier could only be sued (as owners) but were entitled as occupiers to recover on the second policy. (para. 19–06)?
When this reviewer was starting in practice over 20 years ago, the 2nd Edition of The Law of Insurance was commended to me by my pupil-master as the finest textbook in the field of commercial law. That, alas, cannot be said of the 5th Edition, which really consists of two works. First, there are passages which provide a lucid and compendious account of the law, with references to cases generally confined to footnotes. Secondly, however, there are passages which give copious dissertation upon particular cases. Happily, the former passages still predominate and, at its best, Colinvaux can be quite masterly. Take for instance what is said under the head “Wilful misconduct” (para. 4–03):
But while it matters not that a loss [is] due to the assured’s negligence he will never, in the absence of express words, be entitled to recover where the loss is due to his wilful misconduct, as where he intentionally sets fire to his house, or scuttles his ship, or where such acts are done by another with his privity or consent. For insurance is against fortuitous events only, and in such a case the assured has not merely exposed the goods to the chance of injury, he has injured them himself.
It is for passages such as these that it is still worth the practitioner’s while to have Colinvaux on his shelf.
Colinvaux has to be approached with most caution where it is dealing with points on the fringe of insurance law. For instance, the section on “Conflict of Laws” (paras. 1–40/41) can only be described as dreadful. The section begins with a difficult and partly ambiguous general passage, proceeds to confuse Mackender v. Feldia [1967]
260