The third edition of Marine Insurance Legislation was published in 2005. Since that date, much has happened in the marine insurance world. The Institute Cargo Clauses have been revised and the new version came into force on 1 January 2009, the first revision for over 25 years. The new clauses have been included in the appendices and cross-referred to in the annotations at appropriate points. There have been significant decisions from the English courts on virtually every aspect of marine insurance law. The usual suspectsutmost good faith and warrantieshave provided their fair share of fresh case law, and there have been important rulings on some of the more obscure parts of the Marine Insurance Act 1906, notably the sections dealing with abandonment and subrogation.

The author has taken the opportunity in this edition to expand coverage to other common law jurisdictions, and the leading cases from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore have been added to the annotations. There is also reference to Report No 91 of the Australian Law Reform Commission, which undertook a thorough review of the operation of the equivalent legislation in Australia and made modest (and as yet unimplemented) proposals for its reform. English authorities nevertheless remain by far the most numerous. To make the book more accessible to readers in other common law jurisdictions, my Southampton colleague Johanna Hjalmarsson has prepared a table of equivalences which takes in the more or less identical Marine Insurance Acts in each of those jurisdictions. My thanks are due to Johanna not just for that work but for her general assistance in the preparation of this edition. I also owe thanks to the Informa team for commissioning a fourth edition and then dealing with the production process so swiftly and efficiently.

The law is stated as at September 2009.

Rob Merkin
November 2009