In this case  the insured sued the primary insurer and SASRIA in the alternative in seeking an indemnity for its underground mining earthmoving equipment irreparably damaged when the mine in which the equipment was operating was flooded.

The primary policy excluded the SASRIA perils.  The SASRIA policy covered a labour unrest peril.

The question was

The High Court has held that the owner and manager of a supermarket negligently breached the duty of care it owed to a shopper who was injured trying to stop a loose rack from falling.

The customer’s claim arose out of an incident in which he sustained a ruptured bicep when he was shopping at

A defendant is not liable unless their wrongful conduct in fact causes the claimant’s harm.

The defendant is also not liable merely because their conduct in fact caused the claimant’s harm. There must be both factual and legal causation.

The long accepted test of factual causation is the ‘but-for’ test. One asks whether the claimant’s

A German appeal court determined, in a marine claim, that the proximate cause of a vessel’s grounding and ultimate sinking after its main engine cut out was bad weather rather than an engine problem. Accordingly the loss was held to be proximately caused by peril of the sea, covered under the relevant policy.

The events

Where an insurance policy had a retroactive date so that there was no indemnity for any claim ‘arising from or in any way involving any act, error or omission committed’ prior to 5 June 2009, the court held that the indemnity was due because there was no direct or indirect causal connection between the events