• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.13
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• pp.365-387
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• 2000

One of the central and primary doctrine of the law of marine insurance is that the contract of indemnity entered into by assured and insurer is a contract of the utmost good faith. The notion of utmost good faith is a well established doctrine derived from the celebrated case of Carter v. Boehm(1766), decided long before the inception of the Marine Insurance Act(MIA). With the codification of the law, the principle found expression in sections $17{\sim}20$ of the MIA 1906. In section 17 is presented the general duty to observe the utmost good faith, with the following sections introducing particular aspects of the doctrine, namely, the duty of the assured and brokers to disclose material circumstances, and to avoid making misrepresentations. It is somewhat surprising that section 17, being a long founded doctrine, has not attracted the attention of the courts until very recently. Given that the most significant manifestations of uberrimae fidei are non-disclosure and misrepresentations, fulfillment of the obligation of utmost good faith was, not unreasonably, for a long time perceived in terms of the duty to disclose and not to misrepresent. However, Black King Shipping Corporation v. Massie, 'Litsion Pride'(1985) has clarified that the duty of disclosure stems from the duty of utmost good faith, and not vice versa. The duty of utmost good faith is an independent and overriding duty, with the ensuring sections on disclosure and representations providing mere illustrations of that duty. It is now clear that there are important questions with regard to the general doctrine and as to the nature and scope of any duty of good faith continuing after the contract of insurance is made which require separate and fuller discussion. The purpose of this paper is to review the nature and scope of the duty of utmost good faith.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.83-94
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• 2019

Article 17 of the Marine Insurance Act (MIA) states that "A contract of marine insurance is a contract based upon the utmost good faith, and if the utmost good faith be not observed by either party, the contract may be avoided by the other party." In the Carter v. Boehm case, Lord Mansfield was the first to provide a comprehensive description of the duty of utmost good faith, which is analyzed here. This judgement not only laid the foundation for the Modern English Insurance Act, but it also influenced the draft of the English Insurance Act of 2015, which aimed at correcting distortions that occurred during the application of statue law and common law thereafter. The duty of utmost good faith, applied between Lord Mansfield's insured and insurer presents the context of information asymmetry of the insured and insurer entering contracts. In the absence of information asymmetry, in contrast to the effects of being in both sides of the duty of utmost good faith, alleviating the duty of disclosure of the insured, and it is also clear that the warning of the severity of the retrospective avoidance of the breach of duty of disclosure and the need for its limited application have already been pointed out. Furthermore, considering the principle of retrospective avoidance, the duty of utmost good faith should be understood as a concept limited to the duty of disclosure before a contract is concluded

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.14
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• pp.103-152
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• 2000

English contract law has traditionally taken the view that it is not the duty of the parties to a contract to give information voluntarily to each other. In English law, one of the principal distinctions between insurance contract law and general contract law is the existence of the doctrine of utmost good faith in insurance law. The doctrine gives rise to a variety of duties, some of which apply before formation of the contract while others apply post-formation. This article is, therefore, designed to analyse the overall structure and problems of the doctrine of utmost good faith in English marine insurance law. The results of analysis are as following : First, the requirement of utmost good faith in marine insurance law arises from the fact that many of the relevant circumstances are within the exclusive knowledge of the assured and it is impossible for the insurer to obtain the facts to make a appropriate calculation of the risk that he is asked to assume without this information. Secondly, the duty of utmost good faith provided in MIA 1906, s. 17 has the nature as a bilateral or reciprocal, overriding and absolute duty. Thirdly, the Court of Appeal in Skandia held that breach of the pre-formation duty of utmost good faith did not sound in damages since the duty did not arise out of an implied contractual term and the breach did not constitute a tort. Instead, the Court of Appeal held that the duty was an extra-contractual duty imposed by law in the form of a contingent condition precedent to the enforceability of the contract. Fourthly, the scope of the duty of utmost good faith is closely related to the test of materiality and the assured is required to disclose only material circumstances subject to MIA 1906, s. 18(1) and 20(1). The test of materiality, which had caused a great deal of debate in English courts over 30 years, was finally settled by the House of Lords in Pan Atlantic and the House of Lords rejected the 'decisive influence' test and the 'increased risk' test, and the decision of the House of Lords is thought to accept the 'mere influence' test in subsequent case by the Court of Appeal. Fifthly, the insurer is, in order to avoid contract, required to provide proof that he is induced to enter into the contract by reason of the non-disclosure or misrepresentation of the assured. Sixthly, the duty of utmost good faith is, in principle, terminated before contract is concluded, but it is undoubtful that the provision under MIA 1906, s. 17 is wide enough to include the post-formation duty. The post-formation duty is, however, based upon the terms of marine insurance contract, and the duty lies entirely outside s. 17. Finally, MIA 1906, s. 17 provides expressly for the remedy of avoidance of the contract for breach of the duty. This means rescission or retrospective avoidance of the entire contract, and the remedy is based upon a fairly crude 'all-or-nothing' approach. What is needed in English marine insurance law is to introduce a more sophiscated or proportionate remedy.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.309-331
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• 2009

In 25th April. 2008, the Korea legislature gave advance notice on the Revision Bill of Commercial Law in Insurance Division in partial, one of which is the principle of utmost good faith to be codified in accordance with the effectuation of the Revision Bill enforcement. For this, even though the disclosure duty is not included in the Revision Bill, it should also be discussed in relation to the principle of utmost good faith because it is based upon the principle of utmost good faith and forms a part of utmost good faith. In Marine Insurance industry in Korea, there are the sections and the clauses in relation to the English governing law included in the Policies and the Clauses used in Korea and, also, they still come into effect for the Korea Courts' judgements. So. we, Korea, should carefully pay attention to the trend of English courts' leading case, academic world and insurance industry on the disclosure duty in U.K. This study is thus based upon sections 17 and 18~20 of the Marine Insurance Act 1906 and sections 651, 652 and 655 of Commercial Law in Insurance Division, which appear throughout this work. The objective of this work is to analyse the duty of disclosure on Korean and English Insurance Laws including cases cited in this work, comparing the differences resulted from the analysis of the two countries‘laws and legal cases.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.137-154
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• 2019

This study analyzes the major provisions of the UK Insurance Act 2015 and Marine Insurance Act 1906 on the duty of disclosure under the doctrine of utmost good faith. Marine insurance contracts are based on "utmost good faith" and one aspect of this is that MIA 1906 imposes a duty on prospective policy holders to disclose all material facts. In the Insurance Act 2015 of the United Kingdom, the contents of the precedent were enacted such that we have borrowed the legal principles of common law until now. The insurer is required to more actively communicate with the insurer rather than passively underwriting and asking questions of the insured. The Act details the insured's constructive knowledge of the material circumstance by reviewing the current case law and introduces a new system for the insurer's proportionate remedy against the insured's breach of the duty of fair presentation of risk. This is a default regime, which may be altered by agreement between the parties.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.33
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• pp.191-219
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• 2007

Section 39(5) of Marine Insurance Act 1906 concerns the case where with the privity of the assured, the ship is sent to sea in an unseaworthy state. The underwriters argue that the assured had"blind-eye knowledge" of the particular respect in which the ship was unseaworthy. Blind-eye knowledge requires a conscious reason for blinding the eye. There must be at least a suspicion of a truth about which one do not want to know and which one refuse to investigate. What has caused greater difficulty is the broad provision in s.17 which appears to be unlimited in its scope. The expression "utmost good faith" appears to derive from the idea of uberrimae fidei, words which indeed appear in the sidenote. The concept of uberrima fides does not appear to have derived from civil law and it has been regarded as unnecessary in civilian systems. S.17 raises many questions. But only two of them are critical to the decision of the present appeal-the fraudulent claim question and the litigation question. It is however necessary to discuss them in the context of a consideration of the problematic character of s.17. In the Star Sea Case, for the defendants to succeed in their defence under this part of the case the defendants have to show that claim was made fraudulently. They have failed to obtain a finding of fraud. It is not enough that until part of the way through the trial the owners failed to disclose to the defendants would have wished to see in order to provide them with some, albeit inadequate, evidential support for their alleged defence under s.39(5). The defence under s.17 fails. The Purpose of this work is to analyze the Star Sea Case, and to explore problems of the MIA relating to the judgement of this case.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.49
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• pp.257-281
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• 2011

The duty of utmost good faith is found in sections 17-20 of MIA 1906. Critics of the current legal regime on the pre-contractual duty from the viewpoint of the assured, have been concentrated on two points in particular. First, the scope of the duty is so wide that it imposes too high burden on the assured. The second criticism is directed at the remedy, prescribed by the MIA 1906, s.17, against breach of the duty. This article intends to analyse the legal implications of proposals in CP 2007 for reforming pre-contractual duty of utmost good faith of business assured in English insurance contracts law and the problems of proposals. The Law Commissions are proposing four fundamental changes to meet the long-standing criticism and the results of analysis are as following. First, the Law Commissions are proposing a change in the test of constructive knowledge in relation to the duty of disclosure so that a business assured will be obliged to disclose facts which he knows or a reasonable ought to know in the circumstances. Secondly, deviating from the current legal position, the Law Commissions are proposing that if a business assured has made a misrepresentation, but the assured honestly and reasonably believe what it said to be true, the insurer should not have any remedy due to the misrepresentation. The proposal is designed to protect the reasonable expectations of business assured at the pre-contractual stage. Thirdly, the Law Commissions are proposing to change the test for materiality by replacing the "prudent insurer" test by a "reasonable assured" test. The proposed test would focus on the question of what a reasonable assured in the circumstances would think what is relevant to the judgment of the insurer. Finally, the Law Commissions are proposing flexible remedies in case of the breach of the duty. The Law Commissions are proposing no remedy when an assured is acting honestly and reasonably, while avoidance in case of dishonesty. On the other hand, The Law Commissions seem to have an intention to introduce a compensatory remedy in case of negligent breach of the duty.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.19-36
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• 2020

Purpose - This paper analyzes how to interpret the legal view of the precedents to the UK Insurance Act 2015, comparing it to the UK Marine Insurance Act (MIA) 1906 with a focus on the relationship between the duty of uberrimae fidei and the duty of disclosure. Furthermore, this study focuses on the judgment of the Korean Supreme Court in a case, that examined whether the legal nature of the duty of disclosure or duty of uberrimae fidei in insurance law can be considered as a matter related to the insurer's liability when the applicable terms of English law are incorporated under the insurance contract. Design/methodology - This paper belongs to the field of explanatory legal study, which aims to explain and test whether the choice of law is linked to the conditions that occur in the reality of judicial practice. The approach that is used toward this problem is the legal analytical normative approach. The juridical approach involves studying and examining theories, concepts, legal doctrines and legislation that are related to the problem. Findings - Regarding the requirements and effects of breach of the duty of disclosure, if English law and the Korean Commercial Act are handled differently from each other and Korean law is recognized as the applicable law outside of the insurer's liability, it may be whether the insurer's immunity under English law is contrary to s.633 of the Korean Commercial Act. In considering the breach of the duty of disclosure as a matter of the insurer's liability, even if English law is applied as a governing law, the question of how to interpret the agreement of the governing law in this case may also be raised in the interpretation of Korean International Private Law in relation to the applicable law that applies to the rest of the matter, excluding the matters of liability. Originality/value - According to the Korean Supreme Court judgement under the governing law of the MIA 1906, the basis for recognizing the assured's pre-and post-contractual duty of disclosure is separate, and the only important matters to be notified by the assured after the conclusion of the insurance contract are those that are "relevant" and "material circumstances" that are "relevant" to the matter in question after the conclusion of the insurance contract.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.89-112
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• 2003

In this article, 1'd like to analyse the principal distinctions between the duty of disclosure and warranty which are based on the same legal principles, utmost good faith(uberrima fides). Although the duty of disclosure and warranty have a same legal principle to protect insurance contract, they have several difference in appliance actually. Through these comparative analysis, 1 want to reveal the character of warranty which is unfamiliar to us under our commercial law. Warranty has some peculiarity, these are (a)A warranty does not have to be material to the risk, (b)A warranty must be exactly complied with, (c)It is impossible to defence for a breach of warranty, the breach of warranty is irremediable, and A casual connection between breach and loss needs not be shone, (d)A breach of a warranty may be waived by insurer. Sometimes in Korea like those stringent principles of warranty make Korean's small fishing or shipping company suffer from difficult because of insistence of discharge from liability by insurer. So I expect that all of them acknowledge the character of warranty and can make them protect their insurance money by themselves.

• Proceedings of the Korea Port Economic Association Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.271-294
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• 2003

In this article, 1'd like to analyse the principal distinctions between the duty of disclosure and warranty which are based on the same legal principles, utmost good faith(uberrima fides). Although the duty of disclosure and warranty have a same legal principle to protect insurance contract, they have several difference in appliance actually. Through these comparative analysis, I want to reveal the character of warranty which is unfamiliar to us under our commercial law. Warranty has some peculiarity, these are (a)A warranty does not have to be material to the risk, (b)A warranty must be exactly complied with, (c)It is impossible to defence for a breach of warranty, the breach of warranty is irremediable, and A casual connection between breach and loss needs not be shone, (d)A breach of a warranty may be waived by insurer. Sometimes in Korea like those stringent principles of warranty make Korean's small fishing or shipping company suffer from difficult because of insistence of discharge from liability by insurer. So I expect that all of them acknowledge the character of warranty and can make them protect their insurance money by themselves.