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FCA serves BI insurance Reply

FCA has published its Reply and defence to Counterclaims to the Defences of the insurers in its Business Interruption Insurance test case, as well as its amended Particulars of Claim, the judgment from the first Case Management Conference and the Amended Defence of RSA.

The Reply does not address all the legal submissions and arguments, but generally rejected the Defences.  It says the Defences generally depend on unduly restrictive meanings of particular words and approaches to proof of the presence of Covid-19 and causal tests which have the effect of depriving the cover clause of much of its apparent scope, and which no reasonable person would have understood to be the intended meaning. It also criticises the Defences for failing to take account of several key aspects of the insurance, not least the fact the majority of insureds are small, unsophisticated businesses, and that policies are supposed to be readily comprehensible to them.

Emma Radmore