Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. A construction policy's sum insured is exhausted by a covered loss. An excavation keeps collapsing and threatens a neighboring property. The policy carries a mitigation costs clause payable outside the sum insured. The employer hesitates to commit the emergency spend. What should be said?
That costs incurred to mitigate the consequences of a covered loss fall on the insurer even beyond the sum insured
Statute imposes it only in marine insurance; on land, it comes here from the policy's clause, and its purpose explains it: an insured hesitating because the limit is reached would let the loss worsen, which costs everyone more. It removes the hesitation by guaranteeing reimbursement of the useful spend whatever happens, and it is one of the rare clauses from which the insured takes a clear benefit and which it most often does not know about. The answers fronting the money or negotiating an extension are exactly the behavior the rule exists to prevent, and they cost the hours during which the excavation keeps collapsing. The one switching to liability changes cover instead of dealing with the emergency, and it arrives after the damage to the neighbor rather than before it.
Glossary entry →2. A crew installs temporary anchors on an unstable slope, then replaces them with permanent retaining works the following week, with the same resources and on a single invoice. What has to be done, and when?
Ask for the split in the order placed with the contractor, at the time the work is done
The temporary anchors stop the damage growing, they are mitigation costs; the permanent retaining works repair, they are damage. The two fall under different regimes, one of which exceeds the sum insured and the other does not, and a single invoice makes them indistinguishable. The answer re-invoicing at settlement describes common practice and that is why it fails: by then nobody will be able to say which truck did what, and a late reconstruction gets argued rather than proved. Filing the whole on one side or the other means choosing between losing the benefit of the excess and claiming it for works with no right to it, which damages the credibility of the rest of the file.
Glossary entry →3. After a covered loss, the site accelerates to make up the delay: night shifts, bonuses, doubled resources. The insured files those costs as mitigation costs. Is that right?
No: the damage has stopped and its economic consequences are being repaired, which falls under a separate and capped cover where one exists
The test is the direction of time and it settles almost every doubtful case: mitigation stops the damage growing, acceleration repairs what it has already cost. The distinction is not academic since it decides the excess over the sum insured, reserved to the former. The answer invoking limitation of loss is that of an attentive practitioner who has retained the rule's purpose without its test, and it is the most common. The one proposing reimbursement up to the insurer's saving invents an offset with no basis; the one sending it all to the contractor forgets the delay comes from a covered loss and not from a failure of scheduling.
Glossary entry →4. A costly protective measure is taken urgently against a peril the policy excludes. The insured invokes the rule on exceeding the sum insured. What is the answer?
It does not apply: it presupposes a loss falling under a cover in the contract, and urgency changes nothing
The rule comes here from the policy's mitigation costs clause, since statute imposes it only in marine insurance, and it does not create cover where the contract gives none. The three conditions are cumulative: preventing or mitigating, in the insurer's interest, that is on a risk it covers, and reasonably. The answer making urgency the sole condition retains the most visible half of the rule, the half working for the insured, and forgets the half that bounds it. Good faith changes nothing either, and that is not harshness: cover arising from ignorance of an exclusion would make reading the contract a disadvantage.
Glossary entry →5. Making a damaged structure safe means clearing debris, which the preservation clause forbids until the surveyor has attended. How are both held at once?
By photographing before acting, a single free step that satisfies both obligations
Both duties are real and they pull against each other: whoever clears to make safe also destroys the evidence, and whoever waits lets the damage grow while being blamed for not limiting it. The module does not propose sacrificing one, it proposes the only step that serves both, and it is free. The two answers picking one duty are each defensible at the moment of choosing and each exposes to the symmetrical reproach a few months later. Asking for a written waiver is reasonable in itself, and it is one more delay at the precise moment the module explains action is needed within hours.
Glossary entry →