The Preface to O’May informs us that Marine Insurance: Law and Policy was conceived with market people in mind and was intended to be neither too long nor overly legal in content. Both the original author, the late Donald O’May, and Julian Hill, who brought the project to completion after the former’s untimely demise, have remained faithful to these aspirations. The resulting work represents an extremely interesting and welcome addition to the marine insurance library.

The book may be divided into three large sections. The first two chapters cover background material and the general law of marine insurance underpinning the cover provided. Given the purpose of the book, important legal topics such as the duty of utmost good faith and warranties do not receive a detailed treatment, but there is a broad, practical coverage. Chapters 3 to 10, the heart of the work, then furnish an excellent discussion of the cover provided under the main Institute clauses. Of particular note is a comprehensive treatment of collision liability in Chapter 7, including four worked examples of settlements. The short chapter on causation perhaps merits some expansion, however, and could be better located prior to the seven chapters dealing with various areas of cover. Marine insurance policies do not indemnify against perils but against losses causally linked in the required way to a covered peril. Given the need to discuss the operation of the proximate cause doctrine in relation to a number of specific perils, it would be logical to commence discussion of cover with any general consideration of causation rather than so to conclude it. Moreover, it is disappointing that questioning of the causation analysis in Pink v. Fleming (p. 198) is confined to a footnote and that the text fails to address the consequences for the delay exclusion in the Institute cargo clauses of English law’s abandonment of the last in time approach to proximity of causation. Given the approach to proximity of causation firmly adopted by English law this century, it is by no means apparent that English and American law differ with respect to losses caused by delay. The final part of the book, a further eight chapters, provides a full treatment of the claims process and the measure of indemnity, including full chapters on general average and salvage. Generous appendices reproduce relevant legislation, a selection of Institute clauses and other documentation.

Few typographical errors sprang to the eye of this reviewer. However, on page 155 a vital “not” is missing before “excluded” in the second line of the quotation from The Hai Hsuan. On a point of style, the use of square and round brackets appears somewhat haphazard. The index, too, could be improved. There is, for example, no entry for held covered clauses.

Overall, however, O’May is a wide ranging, informative work, clearly written and handsomely presented, if also handsomely priced. Discussion of the law is interspersed with explanation of market practice and of the evolution of marine cover in the market in response to a changing world, experience and litigation. Valuable comparisons are drawn with American law and practice. It is a work warmly to be welcomed.

In its second edition, Marine War Risks by Michael Miller, now incorporated into the Lloyd’s