Orient-Express Hotels Ltd v Assicurazioni General SA (UK Branch) (t/a Generali Global Risk)
Decision date: 27 May 2010
Neutral citation: Neutral citation not available
Court: High Court (Commercial Court)
Insurance classification confidence: high
Overall AI summary confidence: high
Short overview
A short description of the case, material issue, and outcome where supported by the judgment.
AI confidence in this overview: high
This appeal concerned whether a combined property damage and business interruption policy covered business losses concurrently caused by physical damage to the insured hotel and by damage to the surrounding city (the vicinity) from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The central issue was the applicable causation test and the proper construction of the Policy's Trends Clause. The court upheld the arbitral tribunal's approach that business interruption under the main insuring clause is recoverable only for loss caused by physical Damage to the insured property (applying a "but for" approach), and that wider losses from city-wide damage are recoverable only under specific extensions (Loss of Attraction / Prevention of Access). The appeal was dismissed.
Ratio decidendi
The legal reasoning necessary to the outcome, where it can safely be identified from the judgment.
AI confidence in this ratio summary: high
The Trends Clause and the Policy's scheme require that business interruption losses recoverable under the main insuring clause be caused by physical Damage to the insured property; where the same insured event also caused wider damage to the vicinity, the proper approach is to test whether the loss would have arisen "but for" the Damage to the insured property, and other losses from city-wide damage fall to be claimed under the policy extensions (Loss of Attraction / Prevention of Access).
Obiter dicta
Judicial observations that were not necessary to the outcome, where they can safely be identified.
AI confidence in this obiter summary: medium
The judge noted that, if insurers wished to exclude wider consequences of a catastrophe even where damage to the insured property occurred, they should do so expressly and clearly in the policy wording; however, the Policy contained no such clear exclusion.
Warning
The automated summary was prepared from selected parts of a longer judgment; consult the original decision for the complete reasoning. The middle of the judgment was omitted from the judgment; that omission may exclude detailed reasoning, full clause text, and subsidiary findings relied on in the decision.