Causation in Insurance Contract Law
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CHAPTER 4 But-for test in tort
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Introduction
The law of tort purports to provide a remedy to protect certain rights or interests against civil wrongdoings. The corrective justice implications of the causal inquiry are to ensure that the party responsible for any given injury is the one who provides compensation to the party who has incurred the loss. Insurance spreads the risk of harm among a group of risk-bearers and may be viewed as a component of a system of distributive justice. Stapleton considers the relationship between tort and insurance and rejects their conflation as a response to misfortune. She highlights two core distinctions between insurance and tort: first, the heart of insurance is the “collectivisation” of risk, in the sense that insurance categorises insureds into groups according to the insured's likelihood of suffering named misfortune; second, the ultimate moral logic is one of “insured or victim pays.”1