Article by Sheila Simison and Denis Whelan
A great deal of insurance and reinsurance litigation owes its origins to badly drafted contract wordings.
In the recent case of J.R. Charman -v- New Cap Re and others [2002] EWHC (Comm), Mr Justice Morison added his voice to what is now a long line of judicial criticism. He described the clause he was asked to construe as "hopelessly, badly drafted and… hard to construe and implement" and commented that "lifting clauses from different contracts without much thought is all very well, but can lead to unnecessary disputes, such as this".
Badly drafted wordings is a problem with a strong pedigree. As long ago as 1915, Eve J in Law Guarantee Trust & Accident Society Limited -v- Munich Reinsurance Company[1915] 31 TLR 572 described a reinsurance wording as "made up…of paragraphs culled from different precedents and strung together without any accurate assessment of their relative consistency". More recently, in the case of Forsikringsaktieselska
