A British university can’t get insurance money to pay for damage caused by the detonation of a World War II-era bomb that lay undiscovered for nearly eight decades, a London appeals court has ruled, saying coverage is blocked by a policy clause that excludes war-related damage.
The damage to the University of Exeter caused by the dramatic, albeit planned, explosion on its campus in 2021 was “occasioned” by war, the UK Court of Appeal said in a ruling published on Thursday.
That means a policy clause that excludes war damage applies – even though the bomb was dropped 79 years earlier – and the insurer, Allianz Insurance, doesn’t have to pay out.
“The bomb dropped during World War II contained the explosive that caused the damage,” the appeals court said. “Time has done nothing to diminish the power of the bomb.”
A spokesman for the University of Exeter said the institution was disappointed but would accept the ruling. “The university believes this was a legitimate insurance claim for damage caused by an off-site and uncontrollable event,” he said.
Allianz declined to comment.
Many insurance policies contain clauses that allow insurers to avoid paying for war-related damage, preventing the insurance industry from being saddled with runaway claims in the event of a large-scale conflict.
US soil has been virtually untouched by war for more than a century, but some courts have weighed, for example, whether state-sponsored cyber attacks fall under the exclusion. Europe, however, still contains large quantities of unexploded ordnance, dangerous remnants of the 20th century’s devastating conflicts.
The bomb that damaged Exeter in 2021 was discovered by workers during construction work, according to the court ruling. The bomb, dropped by German forces in 1942, was estimated to contain up to 1,389 pounds of high explosive and was aged and rusted. Disposal experts decided to surround the bomb with sand and then carry out a risky procedure to blow away the bomb casing to expose the explosive inside. The procedure detonated the entire bomb, causing damage to Exeter’s halls of residence.
Exeter, which claimed for physical damage and business interruption, argued that the war exclusion clause wasn’t intended to cover damage from long-running conflicts, likening its loss to damage caused by a spear left over from the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But the court said the lapse of time since the war didn’t change its analysis.
“If there had been no bomb, there would have been no explosion,” it said. “The bomb did what it was always intended to do.”
