Legal Research On Valued Insurance Of Ships

The first application of valued insurance is in marine insurance,and the characteristics of ships’ mobility and the difficulty of valuation after the accident make them more suitable for valued insurance.Although Article 55(1)of the Insurance Law and Article 219(1)of the Maritime Law reflect the connotation of valued insurance,there is no specific regulation on over insurance of ships.Since there has been no unified normative guidance on this issue,it has led to disputes in judicial practice and consumed huge judicial resources.Over insurance of ships not only brings confusion to the ship insurer to pay for the ship loss and fulfill the contractual responsibility,but also is not conducive to the insured’s loss being filled in time and brings uncertainty to the protection of the insured’s rights and interests.At present,Article 73 of the Minutes of the Foreign Commercial Maritime Symposium issued by the Supreme People’s Court regulates over insurance of ships,but there are shortcomings at the same time,and we need to further explore on its basis,with a view to a more comprehensive and reasonable regulation of over insurance of ships.The first chapter of this thesis is an overview of valued insurance of ships.Firstly,the kernel and scope of application of valued insurance are explored to show that valued insurance does not deviate from the principle of loss compensation,but upholds the principle of loss compensation together with indefinite value insurance.Secondly,insurance value,insurance amount and actual value are the key elements in the study of valued insurance of ships,and it is necessary to study these elements of valued insurance of ships and their interrelationship.Finally,a distinction is made to study the excess insurance of ships and the over insurance,so as to pave the way for the discussion of judicial practice below.The second chapter of this thesis discusses the constituent elements and the core of the study of valued insurance of ships.This part analyzes the two constituent elements of valued insurance of ships: the formal element and the substantive element,taking into account the typical valued insurance of ships cases.The court’s determination of the material element fills the loophole that the legislation does not clearly stipulate the invalid situation of the agreed insurance value.Over insurance of ships is the core issue of valued insurance of ships research,China’s Insurance Law and Maritime Law do not provide different validity evaluation mechanisms for different situations where the agreed insurance value exceeds the actual value,which leads to differences in theory and judicial practice on the legal issues of over Insurance of ships,resulting in constant disputes,and the key to identify the disputes in order to better "prescribe the right medicine".The third chapter of this thesis discusses the practical problems of over insurance of ships.The current law in China does not regulate the specific situation where the agreed insurance value exceeds the actual value,nor does it exclude the situation where the parties to an insurance contract invalidly agree on the insurance value,which is not conducive to the uniformity of the regulation of over insurance of ships and the resolution of disputes in judicial practice.For the disputes arising from the over insurance,Some local courts have issued their own judicial opinions to regulate over insurance,and although they are all judicial opinions issued for specific cases,their approach can be interpreted as a preliminary exploration of a uniform regulation of over insurance.In addition,Article 73 of the Minutes of the Symposium on Maritime Judicial Work in Foreign Commercial Matters issued by the Supreme People’s Court provides for the issue of over insurance of ships,which provides a direction to resolve the differences between theory and judicial practice,and at the same time has defects,but provides us with a new research platform to provide a direction to unify the regulation of over insurance of ships.The fourth chapter of this thesis is about some suggestions on over insurance of ships.Combining the problems of the application of marine over insurance and the exploration of judicial practice regulation,the author distinguishes the subjects and proposes corresponding regulation suggestions for the court,marine insurer and marine policyholder respectively.The author also proposes legislative improvements to China’s Insurance Law and Maritime Law,taking into account the judicial opinions issued by local courts and the provisions on marine over insurance in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Maritime Judicial Work in Foreign Commercial Matters.