Every self-respecting shipping lawyer has a copy of Arnould to hand or within easy reach. Since its first appearance over 170 years ago, it has been one of the essentials of any shipping law library. It has become an old friend. And just as, on a visit to an elderly relative, one approaches with trepidation in case the years have finally caught up, so one approaches every new edition of Arnould with a sense of unease, lest standards have slipped or it suddenly looks a little bit tired. But one should know by now not to worry. Now in its nineteenth edition, and chock full of new material and new insights, Arnould remains in rude good health.
The task of producing the latest edition of Arnould has been immense. Not only have there been significant legislative changes affecting matters of substantive law but there has, in addition, been a wealth of case law both on issues directly affecting marine insurance and average and on questions ancillary to it.
The legislative changes brought about by the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 and the Insurance Act 2015 were addressed respectively in the eighteenth edition (2013) and the Supplement to it published in May 2016, but the nineteenth edition is the first to include discussion of these matters within the structure of the book itself. Arnould is, of course, no stranger to the disruption caused by legislative inroads into the subject matter of the text – it was already in its seventh edition when the Marine Insurance Act 1906 came into force. The recent legislative interventions, particularly the 2015 Act, usher in very significant changes in the law and require careful handling in the text. Whenever there is new legislation on a given topic, there is always a choice to be made as to whether to tack comment about such changes on at the end or to try to insert that comment piecemeal at appropriate places in the text. There is also a choice to be made as to how much of the “old” law to retain. The current editors have chosen a sensible course. Most, if not all, of the old law has been kept, for the eminently sensible reasons that not only will the old law help in an understanding of the new but disputes will continue to arise for years to come on policies entered into before the new legislation came into force. As to how the text is structured, some changes brought about by the new legislation are noted alongside existing text...
