Public Policy And The Limits Of Insurability

The rules of public policy relating to acts "uninsurable by law" give insurers, in effect, an automatic exclusion that overrides the contract.

It is an ancient principle of English common law that no person may benefit from his own wrong. In the insurance context this has been applied to preclude recovery by an insured of an indemnity against the consequences of his own deliberate crime. There is, however, a marked lack of authority considering the application of the prohibition beyond deliberate crimes. Most of the few cases were decided in previous centuries in very different circumstances, and there is a lack of modern authorities.

It seems to us that the ambit of the prohibition should be as follows: