Brian Goodwin reflects on the EL Trigger ruling
The recent Court of Appeal decision in the EL Trigger Litigation represents the latest attempt by the courts to tussle with this vexed question: which insurance policy should respond when a policyholder faces a claim for an industrial disease which has only recently occurred, but which, owing to a long latency period, was caused many years earlier? The classic example of this phenomenon is mesothelioma, a malignant tumour affecting the pleura (the lining of the lung) which invariably proves fatal. As the tumour can take anything from a few years to 60 years or more to develop, after the exposure to asbestos fibres has occurred, employers and their insurers continue to face a rising cohort of sizeable claims which numerically are not expected to peak for at least another five years.
The enormous financial legacy created by culpable exposure—the vast majority of which had ceased over 20 years ago—has led to insurers looking closely at the wordings of the insuring clauses in their policies to decide whether they are contractually bound to indemnify their policyholders
