Pensions mis-selling

Aggregation of claims

This issue of Insurance Law Monthly could easily be regarded as an ‘aggregation’ special. The extent to which an insurer is entitled to aggregate all losses for the purposes of a limit on liability, or to which an assured is entitled to aggregate all losses for the purposes of a deductible clause, has become a much litigated question in recent months. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the judges deciding the various cases have, in their choice of language, kept at least half an eye on the almost inevitable litigation concerning the number of events that occurred in New York on 11 September. The latest authorities are considered in what follows. The cases show that the principles are well established, but that great difficulty remains in actually applying them to different circumstances and that words may bear different meanings in different contexts and may be used for different purposes.