Webinar: The Death of the Orient-Express: a new train of thought on proximate cause?

On 15 January 2021, the Supreme Court held in the FCA Test Case that the Orient-Express Hotels case had been wrongly decided. Proximate cause has long been an issue that the courts have grappled with and as a result this has caused confusion and uncertainty throughout the insurance industry.

In this webinar, Jeff Heasman will use his vast experience as a lecturer in tort law and insurance law to strip proximate cause back to the basic principles, trace its development up until the Supreme Court decision on 15 January 2021 and then provide views on what impact the decision will have on underwriting considerations going forward.

By the end of the webinar, participants will be able to:

• understand the principles of proximate cause and the “but for” test.
• recognise why the Supreme Court thought it right to overrule the decision in Orient-Express Hotels Ltd.
• implement a strategy around how the judgment of the Supreme Court will impact underwriting considerations going forward.

Jeff Heasman is a leading international trainer and is recognised throughout the world for his work around soft skills within the insurance and financial services industries. Jeff holds both a bachelors and masters degree in laws and after many years of experience working within the legal and insurance industries as a litigation executive and senior liability adjuster, Jeff subsequently qualified as a language instructor and is a certified practitioner member of the Academy of Modern Applied Psychology.

Jeff has been Dean of the Faculty of Law at Cavendish University Zambia (CUZ) in Africa, where he was also a lecturer in the law of torts. He has also been a tutor in law and language at Swansea University. He has delivered courses in Business English to MBA students and company directors at ESIC University in Pamplona, Spain. He still provides personal tuition in communication skills to executives in banks and financial services across the world but especially in Turkey and Spain.

Jeff has delivered many public lectures on subjects such as the law of torts and plain language and has provided training in insurance law and practice to some of the world's largest and most prestigious organisations, as well as regularly providing seminars for the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments (CISI). Jeff is often asked to write blogs and articles for different organisations on law, skills and communication, including for the global industry newspaper, The Lawyer. He has taken part in media debates on the insurance industry in the UK and has also appeared on national television and radio in various countries, primarily talking about professional communication skills. He maintains close links to the insurance industry by providing plain language editing services to help companies ensure their documents are readable and accessible for customers.

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