Research On Legal Issues Of Protection And Indemnity Insurance Contract

Protection and Indemnity (P&I) insurance is a kind of marine insurance, but it hassome specialties. With the developments of legal system on marine liability, P&Iinsurance plays a more important role than ever. However, it receives relatively littlecoverage or treatment in the legal and academic literature, which is detrimental to thefurther development of P&I insurance. In light of the widely coverage of P&Iinsurance, this paper focuses on the basic and key issue—P&I insurance contract, withthe double aim of deepening the research in marine insurance law and making ournational legislations more perfect. The research will be conducted through the study oflegislations and practice, especially of the basic theory of marine insurance law.This paper includes five chapters, totaling 50,000 words. It consists of four parts: theintroducing part, the principal part, and the concluding part.The introducing part is the introductory remarks of the paper which expounds theauthor's intention.Chapter One is macroscopic, which introduces the nature and history of P&I and theconcept of P&I Mutual Clubs. Then the development and nature of P&I contract aredisserated. P&I insurance contract is different from other marine insurance contracts inthe aspects of insurance coverage, business purpose and limitation of liability.Chapter Two is relevant to the theme of this paper, discussing about the application ofbasic principles of marine insurance law in P&I contract, which has some special characteristics.The following third chapter then discusses mutual club's legal responsibility. First ofall, it reviews the general situation of undertaking responsibility of the group, such asthe specific system and conditions. Secondly, mutual club's coverage of insuranceliability is analyzed. Thirdly, the claim of third party against P&I Club is the basis ofdirect action. There exist divergences both in theory and practice on the origin of suchclaim. In China, the provisions about direct action to marine insurers can be only foundin Maritime Procedure Law of China.Chapter Four designates mutual club's future and CPI's system innovation. P&Iinsurance will play its irreplaceable role. Two suggestions are presented that P&Imutual club should be given independent legal status and Maritime Law and InsuranceLaw should be modified to recognize the new category to ensure the CPI with moreinternational competitiveness.