Miller's Marine War Risks
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CHAPTER 7
Civil war
Civil war
7.1 In the Pesquerias 1 case, the House of Lords saw no essential difference between “war” and “civil war” (other than the obvious one that wars are fought between nations and civil wars between the citizens of a State). Lord Porter regarded the matter as settled by the decision of the Court of Appeal in Curtis and Son v. Mathews. 2 7.2 In Curtis the premises insured were in Dublin. On 24 April 1916, some 2,000 men, describing themselves as the armed forces of the self-styled Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, occupied the Post Office and other buildings in Dublin in an event known to history as the “Easter Rising”. The British armed forces attempted to suppress the insurgents and there was some vigorous street-to-street fighting. The Post Office itself was shelled by artillery. This started a fire which spread through several intervening buildings until it destroyed the plaintiff’s premises. The fire brigade was unable to put it out because of the shooting by the insurgents. The court noted with approval the finding of Roche J. when giving judgment for the plaintiffs: “I am satisfied that Easter week in Dublin was a week not of mere riot but of civil strife amounting to warfare waged between military and usurped powers and involving bombardment.” 7.3 There is now confirmation of the position apparent in the Pesquerias case in the more recent case of National Oil Company of Zimbabwe and Others v. Sturge [1991] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 281. There, Saville J., applying the principle that in commercial documents words must be given their ordinary everyday meaning said: “In this context ‘civil war’ means a war with the special characteristic of being civil—i.e. being internal rather than external.”Spinney’s (1948) Ltd. and Others v. Royal Insurance3
The facts
7.4 The most authoritative case on “civil war” is Spinney’s (1948) Ltd. and Others v. Royal Insurance. The facts were complicated in the extreme, and they received a thorough and exhaustive analysis from Mustill J. It is worth rehearsing them in some detail. No easy assumptions could be made about whether any of the separate parties had de facto or de jure status.Page 46
… Any act of any person acting on behalf of or in connection with any organisation with activities directed towards the overthrow by force of the government de jure or de facto or to the influencing of it by terrorism or violence.