In The University of Exeter v Allianz Insurance PLC [2023] EWCA Civ 1484 Coulson LJ states
[1] The issue in this appeal is whether the loss and damage caused in 2021 by the controlled detonation of a hitherto undiscovered World War II bomb was “occasioned by war” and therefore excluded by the applicable insurance policy. “Unguided gut feeling” (as it is called in one of the authorities) may suggest that the damage caused by a controlled detonation 79 years after the bomb was dropped, and 76 years after the war ended, was not “occasioned by war”. But those same authorities make clear that the approach to legal causation is more nuanced than that, and subject to specific rules and principles. At first instance, HHJ Bird (sitting as a High Court judge in the TCC) (“the judge”) applied those principles and concluded that the, or at least a, proximate cause of the damage was the dropping of the bomb during World War II, such that the exclusion applied. The central issue on this appeal is whether he was right to do so.
[2] I should note that, although the issue in this case is primarily one of law, leading counsel on both sides referred to the authorities in a measured and controlled way, and spared the court the incontinent citation of numerous vaguely relevant causation authorities, all too common in appeals of this type. We are very grateful to them.
