This elaboration of the title will serve to show the boundaries of the present discussion. The interaction between fault and recovery is complex, and the field is too large to be covered in its entirety here. For example, fault may take the shape of a want of good faith on the part of assured or insurer, such as to make the contract voidable at the option of the innocent party. Bad faith may also operate after the loss has arisen, to deprive an assured who has put forward his claim in an improper manner of a recovery to which he would otherwise be entitled. Again, the contract of insurance may be ancillary to a commercial transaction, the conception or execution of which the assured has brought about in a manner which is contrary to law, and which infects the insurance to such a degree as to make it unenforceable. These varieties of fault raise interesting and difficult questions, much litigated in recent years. They are, however, outside the scope of our present enquiry, which is concerned with situations where a fault on the part of someone has a place in the sequence of events leading up to the loss in respect of which the claim is made: an enquiry which will not, however, be confined to the acts or omissions of the assured himself, but will take into account any fault which bears upon the event on which the claim under the policy is based.

Reminding ourselves of the question just stated, it seems that in certain situations at least, intuition suggests an obvious answer. Three examples may be given.