Appeal Courts Triumph for Structural Defects Policyholders: Manchikalapati v Zurich
Leaseholders of flats in a development in Manchester have secured a major victory against Zurich Insurance under a standard form defects policy, in a case with significant implications for new build home owners affected by inadequate construction works. Following a long running Court battle over claims first notified in 2013, policyholders have been awarded approximately £11 million to rectify failures by the insolvent developer to comply with technical requirements and building regulations.
Residents moved into New Lawrence House from 2009 but were forced to leave following a prohibition notice issued shortly after the Grenfell Tower disaster in June 2017, in view of structural deficiencies including missing lifts and balconies, a collapsing roof deck and complete lack of fire stopping measures. The Court of Appeal judgment handed down last week essentially upheld the decision of HHJ Davies, requiring Zurich - through run-off insurers East West - to pay out under the Standard 10 New Home Structural Defects Insurance Policy (the Policy), aside from overturning the maximum liability cap of around £3.6 million applied below.
The development contains 104 flats and the Claimants between them own only 30, with many others left empty. The Policy limited Zurich’s liability for new homes forming part of a continuous structure by reference to “the purchase price declared to Us”, which had been construed as restricting the Claimants’ recovery to the combined sums paid for their own flats. The Court of Appeal disagreed and recalculated the cap based on the total purchase price of all flats in the block, since the Policy enabled a single leaseholder to recover the entire cost of rectifying a danger to the health and safety of occupants and the previous approach would prevent them from doing so. The Policy wording was ambiguous and should be construed “in a manner which is consistent with, not repugnant to, the purpose of the insurance contract”.
Zurich advanced a number of grounds of appeal relating to interpretation of the Policy, all of which were rejected. Lord Justice Coulson found that:
“what [Zurich] suggest as the proper interpretation of the words used in their own policy is, on analysis, nothing of the kind, and is instead a strained and artificial construction (often requiring the interpolation of words not present) with the result that it becomes impossible to see any circumstances in which [Zurich] would ever pay out under the terms of the policy.”
In particular, the Court of Appeal decided:
1. It is not necessary for the costs of rectification work to have been incurred before a claim can be made under the Policy - otherwise insurers could take advantage of leaseholders’ impecuniosity to avoid liability altogether;
2. The fact that funds recovered would in part be used to pay the Claimants’ lawyers and funders was irrelevant. An insured can apply the insurance proceeds as they wish and it would be unjust to hold otherwise, penalising the Claimants merely because they do not have pockets as deep as Zurich’s. The legal and funding costs would never have been incurred had Zurich acknowledged their proper liabilities at the outset;
3. The Policy does not require the insured to sue any third parties against whom the insured might have a possible claim before pursuing Zurich under the Policy;
4. The underground car park and balconies at the development fall within the scope of cover;
5. The condensation exclusion in the Policy does not apply where the condensation which causes damage is caused by a defect. The proximate cause of damage is the defect, not condensation.
6. The trial judge’s application of Policy excess provisions could not be challenged on appeal.
New build developments are usually constructed by single-purpose corporate entities with limited assets, and purchasers of defective properties have restricted rights of recourse against those responsible for the construction or building control approval process in the absence of contractual claims under collateral warranties (Murphy v Brentwood DC [1991] 1 A.C. 398, Herons Court v Heronslea Ltd [2019] EWCA Civ 1423). The decision in this case is an important step forward in protecting the interests of new build home owners, in light of wider concerns about regulatory oversight and industry standards under contractor-led procurement methods.
The Zurich Policy was a standard wording indirectly descended from the original NHBC scheme and widely used across the country at the relevant time, with the intention of providing peace of mind for the purchasers and mortgagees of new build properties. The policyholder-friendly interpretation upheld by the Court of Appeal serves as a welcome reminder of this commercial context, limiting the extent to which insurers can seek to rely upon unrealistic arguments to avoid liability or delay payment for outstanding claims. Home owners with the benefit of structural defects policies should notify potential claims as soon as possible, to maximise the prospects of effective recoveries.
Manchikalapati & others v Zurich Insurance plc & others [2019] EWCA Civ 2163
https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2019/2163.html&query=(MANCHIKALAPATI)
Amy Lacey is a partner at Fenchurch Law
The 1930 Third Party (Rights Against Insurers) Act – still relevant for years to come
Shirley Anne Redman (suing as widow and administratix of the estate of Peter Redman) v (1) Zurich Insurance Plc (2) ESJS1 Limited
The recent decision of Mr Justice Turner in Redman v (1) Zurich Insurance (2) ESJS1 Limited confirms that the Third Party (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010 (“the 2010 Act”) does not have retrospective effect.
As a result, a third party must still bring a claim under the 1930 Act where both the relevant insolvency and the relevant insured liability occurred before the commencement date of the 2010 Act (which is 1 August 2016).
Mrs Redman’s husband worked for a company latterly known as ESJS1 (“the Company”) between 1952 and 1982. On 5 November 2013 he died from lung cancer alleged to have been caused by exposure to asbestos during the course of his employment. On 30 January 2014 the Company was wound up and was eventually dissolved on 30 June 2016.
Mrs Redman sought to recover for her husband’s illness and death in a claim brought against the Company’s insurers, Zurich, under the Third Party Rights regime.
It is well understood that the 2010 Act has advantage over the 1930 Act in this regard. Whereas the 1930 Act requires the liability against the insured to be established (by agreement or judgment, with the latter sometimes requiring the insured first to be restored to the register followed by proceedings against it) prior to the covered claim being brought against the insurer, the 2010 Act allows a claim encompassing both liability and coverage to be made against the insurer alone.
Mrs Redman therefore sought to bring a claim under the 2010 Act. However, both the date of the Company’s insolvency and the date of the Company’s alleged liability had arisen prior to the commencement of the 2010 Act (the date of liability arising at least some thirty years prior) and the 2010 Act provides that the 1930 Act is to continue to apply in such circumstances.
As a result, the Judge struck out the claim, saying that to apply the interpretation of the Act favoured by Mrs Redman (ie, to read into the Act that the relevant date was the date that liability against the insured was established) would be tantamount to ”judicial legislation”.
Accordingly, the 1930 Act will continue to apply to those cases where the insolvency event (and the underlying liability) pre-dates 1 August 2016, with the 2010 Act applying where either event occurred thereafter. As a result, until about 2022 (when any third party liability will be time-barred) the old regime will remain relevant, and insureds, brokers and insurers will have to live with two potentially relevant regimes.
Tom Hunter is an associate at Fenchurch Law
No on-going obligation to assess if a claim is likely: Zurich -v- Maccaferri
In a (predictably?) pro-policyholder decision, the Court of Appeal (Black and Christopher Clark LJJ) yesterday dismissed Insurers’ appeal. Instead it agreed with the trial judge that the policyholder (Maccaferri) had not breached a condition in its public liability policy requiring it to notify insurers “as soon as possible after the occurrence of any event likely to give rise to a claim”.
Maccaferri’s business involved the hiring out of “Spenax Guns” (pictured - in effect, giant staplers used to tie steel mesh gabions together) to builders’ merchants, who in turn hired them out to building contractors. In this case, an employee of one such building contractor was badly injured by a Spenax Gun. Maccaferri quickly found out that there had been an incident involving one of its Guns, but did not know either that there had been a serious injury or that the Gun might have been faulty - as opposed to its having been mis-used or the accident having happened without anyone’s fault.
Zurich argued, however, that further information about the incident which Maccaferri subsequently discovered meant that many months after the incident Maccaferri knew or should have known that a claim was likely, and thus should have - but failed - to notify them, thereby disentitling it from cover.
The Court of Appeal disagreed. Instead, it agreed with the trial judge that the clause in question required a reasonable assessment by the insured at the time of the “event” as to whether it was likely to give rise to a claim and did not, as Zurich had submitted, impose an obligation on the insured to “carry out something of a rolling assessment, as circumstances develop, as to whether a past event is likely to give rise to a claim”. The Court of Appeal held that:
“This is a condition introduced by Zurich into its policy which has the potential effect of completely excluding liability in respect of an otherwise valid claim for indemnity. If Zurich wished to exclude liability it was for it to ensure that clear wording was used to secure that result. It has not done so. It is possible to construe the use of the phrase “as soon as possible” as meaning that even if, when the event occurred, it was not likely to give rise to a claim, the obligation to notify would arise whenever thereafter the insured knew or should have known that an event which had occurred in the past was likely to give rise to a claim. But I regard this as a strange interpretation and erroneous.
It is, in any event, far from clear that that is the right interpretation and, given the nature of the clause, the ambiguity must be resolved in favour of Maccaferri.”
Putting the boot in (or kicking an insurer when it’s down), the Court of Appeal went on to find that, even if Zurich’s construction of the clause had been correct, nothing in fact had subsequently occurred which meant that Maccaferri ever knew or should have known that a claim was in the offing, until it had eventually received (and promptly notified) civil proceedings against it.
The Court of Appeal’s decision is yet another instance of the courts deciding coverage disputes in the policyholder’s favour when that outcome is open to it on the relevant policy wording and when there is no evidence of any real culpable conduct by the policyholder.
However, one should sound a note of caution. As the Court of Appeal mentioned in passing (see paragraph 33 of the judgment), while the above might apply to a typical clause in a public liability policy requiring the policyholder to notify “an event likely to give rise to a claim”, the position will be different in professional indemnity policies, where the obligation is to notify a circumstance which is likely to (or, depending on the wording, which might) give rise to a claim. Whereas an event is a one-off occurrence, whose likelihood to give rise to a claim is (as we now know) to be assessed then and there, circumstances can and do evolve during the currency of a professional indemnity policy. Thus, whereas a client’s failure to pay a professional's invoice would, in isolation, almost always fall short of a notifiable “circumstance”, the position would change if, a few months later, the client explained that his failure to pay was the result of his dissatisfaction with the services which he had received.
See: Zurich Insurance plc -v- Maccaferri Ltd [2016] EWCA Civ 1302(12/01/2017)
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2016/1302.html
Jonathan Corman is a partner at Fenchurch Law.
