‘That wicked rule,that evil doctrine … ’: Reforming the Law on Disclosure in Insurance Contracts

The Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012, which abolishes the consumer assured's duty to volunteer information, heralds the first successful outcome of the English and Scottish Law Commissions current insurance contract law reform project. This paper outlines the defects of the common law duty of disclosure which the Law Commissions sought to address. It goes on to consider why previous legislative attempts failed, the self‐regulatory measures introduced by the insurance industry as a means of resisting earlier pressure for statutory intervention, and how that resistance broke down. Finally, it examines the scope of the 2012 reforms and the current consultation being undertaken in respect of the duty of disclosure in relation to business insurance. It concludes by assessing the significance of the statute in providing a necessary impetus for future insurance law reforms.     

“Bubbles”—A Spot Diagnosis

Abstract: Aspiration of blood is a phenomenon observed in violent and natural death scenarios. Bloodstain patterns evolving from expectoration of aspired blood may look suspicious of a violent genesis and thus mislead crime scene investigators. In the present case, a woman was found lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Furthermore, bloodstains covered her face, clothing, and surrounding furniture and walls. Bloodstain pattern analysis and medicolegal inspection of the suspected scene of crime were carried out and revealed dispersed stains with enclosed gas bubbles in the absence of signs of physical violence leading to the assessment of a natural manner of death. The bloodstains were attributed to expiration of blood because of an internal bleeding. Medicolegal autopsy confirmed the on‐site diagnosis as a fatal esophageal varix rupture was found.     

Hanging — A review

A study of 201 cases of death due to hanging, 95% being suicidal in nature and 5% being accidental; in addition there was one judicial hanging. The majority of deaths were in persons over 50 years of age, males predominating particularly in the 50 – 60 age group. In contrast to the Registrar General's annual returns for suicide which show a steady decrease over the past 20 years, deaths due to hanging have increased considerably, particularly in the last decade. This trend could be related to the dramatic fall in carbon monoxide poisoning and more circumspect prescribing of barbiturate drugs.     

Lord Woolf's Access to Justice: Plus ça change…

The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble. (Dickens, Bleak House, Ch XXXIX)     

Youth Gangs — A Special Problem

Beginning in the mid-1980s, some youth gangs with origins in the large urban centers of Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, and New York, became major criminal entrepreneurs in the supply of illicit drugs. In a very short time, many of these gangs have developed intrastate and interstate networks for the purpose of expanding their highly profitable participation in the state, regional, and national illegal drug sales market. Significant levels of violence and related criminal behavior have accompanied this phenomenon. Youth have always been distributors and sellers of drugs within their local peer groups, whether these groups were informal or organized as “gangs.” Most youth who are involved with illicit drugs have not had direct contact with drug dealers. Their street, school, or neighborhood suppliers have been friends and acquaintances. The onset of domestically-produced drugs or drug compounds presented an opportunity for youth to be in control of the supply. Domestically grown marijuana represented such an opportunity. Clandestine laboratory-produced methamphetamine and PCP increased it. And, finally, domestically-manufactured “crack” or “rock” cocaine opened the floodgates for serious youth participation in the huge profits available through illicit drug trafficking.     

‘We,the European People . . .’—Relâche?

Abstract:  The failure of the European constitutional treaty has not been taken seriously by the European constitutionalists. It is regarded as a kind of accident which will be repaired in due course. The article is a plea for a reopening of the debate on Europeanness. Europe cannot and should not be a 'superstate'; nor can it be a kind of revival of the European nation state which is threatened by globalisation. Even less can it be a community of post-national deliberators as Jürgen Habermas would have it. Europe should be constructed as an entity of its own which responds to the heterarchical relational logic of fragmentation which characterises post-modernity and globalisation of which it is a part. It cannot be its counterpart. Europe does not need a 'constitution', and it does not need a 'people' either.