A Study On Certain Legal Issues With Respect To Marine Insurance Exception "Inherent Vice"

Inherent vice is usually stipulated as an exception of the insurers in many related laws and insurance articles. However, as a microscopic law mechanism, inherent vice is with a lot of legal issues that need to be analyzed and investigated in legal practice and research. This article concentrates on English legal practice and research with respect to the following legal issues of inherent vice, and makes some comments on the idea of using the same as a source of reference in China:First of all, the definition of inherent vice; In chapter1of this article, after introducing the related laws and insurance articles with respect to inherent vice in Britain and China, this article concentrates on the definition of inherent vice in British law and theories, and after that the author comments on the important definition given in Arnould, and then gives the opinion that Chinese law and practice should use the definition in Britain as a very important source of reference after investigating and analyze the same carefully; secondly, the legal basis for inherent vice to be an exception. The author holds that it can not simply be said that, the reason for inherent vice to be an exclusion is that the cause of the loss is within the subject-matter itself rather than from without, or is that inherent vice lacks fortuitous element. However, the author has not found other conceiving explanations for the legal basis for inherent vice to be an exception, and he speculates that there may be some other things that have not yet been understood by him with respect to the two above-mentioned explanations previously denied by him; thirdly, the relationship between inherent vice and perils of the seas. This article introduces Britain court’s opinion in respect of this issue from the perspective of a recent case called "The Cendor MOPU", and then comments on this case in two aspects, i.e."whether perils of the seas and inherent vice can be the concurrent proximate causes of the loss" and "the feasibility of the approach of determining whether or not a loss is fortuitous by classifying the weather conditions", and at last part of the analysis of this "relationship" the author gives his opinion on the issue of using "The Cendor MOPU" as a source of reference in Chinese marine insurance law; fourthly, inherent vice and the heating and sweating of the goods. The author analyzes these two issues in Britain respectively, and gives his opinion on the idea of using the same as a source of reference in China.