The High Court has allowed insurance expert William Farmer to give evidence in a dispute over cover for leased aircraft affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while excluding the section of his report addressing when aircraft are “in the course of repossession”.
In a ruling delivered on 23 January 2025, Ms Justice Eileen Roberts rejected an application by aircraft lessors to exclude most of Mr Farmer’s evidence before he testified. The ruling covers five related commercial actions against Lloyd’s insurers and other underwriting defendants.
The lessors argued that interpretation of the insurance policies was a matter for the court, and that Mr Farmer’s references to market understanding risked putting forward subjective views about what policy terms meant. They accepted that some evidence on premium differences and other insurance products might be admissible. The defendants said his evidence could help explain the specialised aviation insurance market and should be tested through cross-examination before the court ruled on its status.
The judge said the court must interpret the policies objectively, by considering their wording in the context of relevant background available to the parties. She noted that the defendants had pleaded market practice and understanding as issues, and that the plaintiffs’ expert, Mr Hughes, had already given evidence responding to Mr Farmer’s report. In those circumstances, she considered it fairer and more efficient to hear Mr Farmer and allow the plaintiffs to cross-examine him.
That decision does not determine whether the evidence will ultimately be admissible or relevant. The judge said the parties may address those questions in closing submissions, and that evidence amounting only to subjective views about policy meaning would not form part of the factual context for interpreting the policies.
The court excluded section 8 of Mr Farmer’s report, which addressed the meaning of “in the course of repossession”. Mr Farmer wrote that he had never encountered a case turning on that phrase, but offered a view that physical steps, rather than a demand for return, would be expected. The judge held that the section applied a purported market understanding to specific policy wording and the facts of this case, intruding on a question of law for the court. She also found the proposed understanding hypothetical and unsupported by prior market experience.
As a consequence, paragraph 7.3 of Mr Hughes’s report and section 9 of the experts’ joint memorandum, which commented on section 8, must also be removed. The ruling concerns what evidence may be heard in the ongoing trial; it does not decide the underlying insurance disputes.