Liability insurance: contractual claims

In Fletcher Construction Co Ltd v Chubb Insurance New Zealand Ltd [2023] NZHC 943 the New Zealand High Court was asked to construe the words of a Third-Party Liability Policy in relation to a construction project. Two issues were under consideration: did an insuring clause cover pure contractual liability; and did an exclusion operate to remove the insurers' liability for loss arising from damage to the contract works before they had been handed over to the employer? This was a claim for summary judgment, and so no definitive conclusions could be reached in the absence of evidence of the factual matrix, but the judge's view on both issues was very clear.

Fletcher Construction: the contractual background