Peril and Fortuity in Property and Liability Insurance
This article concludes that the characteristic feature of insurance policies, their standard-form nature, strongly supports an interpretive approach that emphasizes the primacy of insurance policy language and relegates legal rules to a secondary position in the interpretive enterprise. For this reason, the courts should be wary of employing so-called rules regarding insuring against nonfortuitous loss. Rather, to determine whether there is coverage under an insurance policy whose provisions address the fortuity issue, the courts should apply the policy language.