The Court of Justice of the European Union has delivered the most important ruling on motor insurers’ liability in decades.
Writing in this week’s NLJ, solicitor Nicholas Bevan says that last month’s ruling in Damijan Vnuk v Zavarovalnica Triglav C-162/13 extends third party motor insurance (TPMI) to cover “any motor vehicle, and any use made of such vehicles, provided it is a normal function of that vehicle, anywhere on land”.
Bevan says the decision has immediate, obvious and far-reaching implications for our statutory and extra-statutory provision for TPMI in the UK and affects millions of motor insurance policies that all contain unlawful restrictions and exclusions of liability.
“Vnuk renders obsolete whole rafts of time-honoured judicial rulings and exposes the state to liability for permitting systemic infractions of European law,” he adds.
