Another court, this time the English High Court, has again said that the contra proferentem rule will only be applied where there is more than one reading that can make sense of the words or where the wording of a clause is so ambiguous as to be incapable of meaning.
The court said:
“I accept
An appeal court in the US state of Virginia has reaffirmed the caution to resist the temptation to find ambiguity in the wording of a policy (and therefore any contract). A great many words – viewed in isolation – have alternative, and sometimes quite different, dictionary meanings. We must resist the temptation to “give up
The quality of the drafting of a policy may be taken into account when construing its terms:
“The policy should be construed as a whole … It should not be approached by isolating particular fragments or disregarding its overall character … This also requires consideration of the style, layout, language and structure of the instrument.
The New South Wales Court of Appeal, considering the wording of a business interruption policy in the context of a Covid-19 claim, dealt with the contra proferentem rule which provides that any ambiguity in a policy of insurance should be resolved by adopting the construction favourable to the insured. The court remarked that the contra