Civil war

In the Pesquerias case, the House of Lords saw no essential difference between “war” and “civil war” (other than the obvious one that wars are fought between nations and civil wars between the citizens of a State). Lord Porter regarded the matter as settled by the decision of the Court of Appeal in Curtis and Son v. Mathews. The most authoritative case on “civil war” is Spinney’s (1948) Ltd. and Others v. Royal Insurance. It is clearly essential that a large number of the listed factors must exist, and moreover must exist to a substantial degree, before the scale of the conflict can be serious enough to warrant the conclusion that a civil war exists. In applying three tests in Spinney’s case, the judge found that at the time of the looting in January 1976 “civil war”, in the sense that it is used in a war risks policy, did not exist.