Key Divergences Between English and American Law of Marine Insurance (Hardcover: 232 pages)

In the United States, marine insurance underwriting began in the eighteenth century, although British firms continued to dominate. The American law of marine insurance took its cue from English law; English legal precedents were cited routinely in American courts. For fifty years after the English law was codified in the Marine Insurance Act 1906 (MIA), it could truly be said that there was a unified Anglo-American law of marine insurance, and that English law was part of the "general maritime law" of the United States.

The unity of the Anglo-American law, which was so beneficial to the functioning of the international marine insurance industry, was broken abruptly in 1955 by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Wilburn Boat v. Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., a case that created controversies over the uniformity of the law, which have yet to subside. The purpose of this work is to explore the extent of the breakdown of the uniformity of the law and to point to its cure.