What is the ‘Non-Damage Denial of Access’ Pandemic Ruling?

What does the judgement in Corbin & King mean for future insurance policies?

Indeed, the AXA policy that was tested in the High Court appears to have been fairly unusual in its construction, therefore to assume that this opens the floodgates on ‘similar but different’ wordings may be incorrect.

Any clients that have a ‘Non-Damage Denial of Access’ clause in their own policy need to wait for further advice to be passed down by insurers. Needless to say, we have already approached each insurer that carries this type of extension. But insurers are already on the defensive; QBE, for example, has provided a detailed reasoning as to why they believe that their own ‘Non-Damage Denial of Access’ clause does not respond to claims arising from COVID-19.

On the question of multiple venues being insured under the same policy, the judgement seems very positive. The judgement in ‘Corbin & King’ makes a great deal of reference to ‘composite’ policies that cover ‘multiple assureds’; effectively meaning policies which cover multiple parties under multiple guarantees. However, no reference is made to individual premises until the very last paragraph. This could possibly mean there is a difference between one policyholder with multiple premises versus one policyholder with a policy including different headings and sections referring to different trading styles. It’s clear much is still left to be argued and determined.