There is a substantial body of English case law explaining the import of a contrast between different aggregation clauses.
AXA Reinsurance (UK) PLC v Field (1996) 1 WLR 1026 at 1035 contrasted the words “arising from one originating cause” with the words “arising out of one event” used to define the unifying factor used in different policies:
”In my opinion these expressions are not all the same for two reasons. In ordinary speech an event is something which happens at a particular time at a particular place in a particular way. … A “cause” is to my mind something altogether less constricted. It can be a continuing state of affairs; it can be the absence of something happening. Equally the word “originating” was in my view consciously chosen to open up the widest possible search for a unifying factor in the history of losses which it is sought to aggregate.”
The position is in principle, no different in South African law.
