Insurance Law Monthly

RoadPeace v Secretary of State for Transport [2017] EWHC 2725 (Admin) is a challenge by way of judicial review to various provisions of the Road Traffic Act 1988, the allegation being that the UK regime is incompatible with the requirements of the EU Consolidated Motor Insurance Directive, European Parliament and Council Directive 2009/103/EC.

Mutual insurers, notably P&I Clubs, provide in their rules that there is no entitlement to payment if a member has a claim, Instead, there is a discretion, but that discretion must not be exercised in an arbitrary, capricious or irrational fashion. In Wellington City Council v Local Government Mutual Funds Trustee Ltd [2017] NZHC 2901 Collins J discussed the exercise of such a discretion in the unusual circumstances where the mutual had given up valuable rights under its reinsurance in the absence of knowledge that a member faced a claim.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Co v Kellogg Brown and Root Pty Ltd [2017] NSWSC 1519, a decision of Stevenson J in the New South Wales Supreme Court, concerned the relationship between a professional indemnity policy obtained by the defendants and an excess layer long-term project policy to which the defendants were named assureds.

Under section 51 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 the court may make a costs order against any person, whether or not a party to the proceedings. In practice that jurisdiction has been exercised in exceptional circumstances only, eg, against a non-party whose interventions – generally by funding – have caused an action to be brought or defended when that would not otherwise have been the case.