In the 1970s, if you had been an importer of goods on, say, c.i.f. terms and those goods arrived damaged, you would have to look at an insurance taken out by your supplier. The likelihood is that, in order to pursue your claim against cargo underwriters, you would have needed to understand English and also to possess a working knowledge of it in its Shakespearian form. Even then, you could be forgiven for concluding on occasion that the words of the policy did not mean what they said. You would also need a copy of a 60-year-old piece of United Kingdom legislation and the schedules attached to it. Depending on the circumstances in which your goods had been damaged, you might need to consult other obscurely worded insurance conditions referred to but not actually quoted in the insurance documents before you. Finally, even if you had collected and mastered all this you might be in for a disappointment unless you had researched English case-law since at least 1906.

The importer would have had an insurance certificate quoting the Lloyd’s SG Form of Policy or its Company equivalent. This certificate would have referred to the appropriate Institute Cargo Clauses: All Risks (but not every risk); WA—“with average”; and FPA—“free of particular average”. What, for a start, is a layman to make of these terms? These clauses would refer to other sets of clauses in order sometimes to define the cover available. Thus, the importer would need the WA Clauses in order to find out what was covered by the FPA Clauses. If the supplier had provided war or strikes cover, then this cover would again be found in separate clauses. But, if you had these clauses available, you would then find yourself being referred back to the document you started with. Even if you had all the documents required, understood what they meant and how they worked, you might be surprised to find your claim not covered because of terms implied by the Marine Insurance Act 1906 of the United Kingdom or interpreted by the schedules thereto and English case-law.

It is true that an assured with a potential claim could seek expert advice from his brokers or, if necessary, lawyers practising in the field of marine insurance, but this would involve him in expense and delay and, in any case, this was hardly satisfactory: a consumer should know in advance what he is buying. Accordingly, it will be understood that an importer on the other side of the world had very little chance of understanding what insurance protection he had as his goods were carried to him. The position was all the more remarkable when you consider that worldwide this insurance “package” (if it can be so-styled) was often being provided by insurers to assureds of whom neither had English as his native tongue.

Even in the U.K., this system of insurance cover had come in for repeated criticism, particularly from our judiciary. Going back as far as 1812 it was described as “strange”, “absurd” and “incoherent.”1 Since then the bench has added the