Despite legislative reforms and the current definition of the marine insurance contract by the legislator in article L.171.1 of the French Insurance Code, the qualification of the contract remains a delicate issue, with case law recently extending its scope. Part one of an article by Stream avocats & solicitors on the scope and classification of marine insurance contracts.
« Aussi surprenant que cela puisse paraître, la détermination du domaine de l’assurance maritime par rapport à celui de l’assurance terrestre est loin d’être parfaitement claire. » This observation made by Professor Claude J. Berr when he wrote the chapter on “Assurance maritime” for the Répertoire de droit commercial remains true today, more than a decade later. Marine insurance was born to protect sailors from the risks of maritime adventure. As man’s ambitions to conquer the oceans grew, so did the universe of maritime activities.
The map of traditional risks known to be associated with the marine environment and shipping has expanded accordingly. Risks originating in land-based activities sometimes affect those that take place at sea, and maritime activities themselves generate a multitude of risks. Faced with this tangle of risks – traditional, new, evolving and diversified – the field of marine insurance has finally become obscured.
Attempts to regulate this field have in fact limited its scope, as legislators have often found it difficult to separate themselves from the traditional activity that gave rise to insurance, i.e. marine navigation. The result has been to leave insurers operating in other sectors free to contractually organize the terms and conditions of their insurance cover.
However, the field of transport insurance, which seems to have received particular attention from the legislator, is still not clearly defined.
This is because, on the one hand, the criteria for qualifying as a marine insurance contract are not precisely defined and, on the other hand, the yachting sector is subject to maritime law, while at the same time protecting itself against risks with land-based insurers.
Despite this seemingly straightforward demarcation for the insurance of risks associated with recreational activities, difficulties sometimes arise in practice in qualifying the insurance contract. The legislator has made it easier to classify marine insurance contracts by developing a criterion whose stability is, however, uncertain (I), and which has been set aside for the insurance of risks associated with recreational activities, the legislator having chosen to remove these risks from the domain of marine insurance (II).
…/…. (subscriber access)
Jérôme de Sentenac, « Quelle délimitation entre assurance terrestre et maritime (partie 1) » in the Tribune de l’Assurance, March 26, 2024.
