Insurance covers accident and not ageing. The inherent vice exclusion therefore removes from cover a thing's propensity to deteriorate through its own constitution: matter that crazes, a pigment that shifts, a support that warps, an old textile growing brittle. The principle is unarguable, failing which the insurer would fund routine conservation rather than a fortuity. The consequence is less so: on the oldest and often most precious objects, the exclusion removes from cover what is most likely to happen to them.
That asymmetry must be stated squarely, because it decides a policy's real worth. On a seventeenth-century panel the most probable damage is not a fall or a fire: it is the movement of the wood, flaking, the migration of a varnish. In other words the likeliest loss is precisely the uncovered one, and cover bears on rare events. That is not a defect of the contract, it is what insuring a fortuity means, but an owner who believes they have covered their object against what threatens it has mistaken what is being covered.
The practical problem is not the principle, it is the boundary. A shock does not crack a sound panel and does crack one already predisposed. Is the deterioration then due to the transport or to the constitution of the property? Both propositions are true at once, and the drafting decides what is made of that: depending on the wording, an excluded cause contributing to the damage defeats the whole claim, or an apportionment is made between the accidental share and the inherent one. The gap between those two readings is among the largest in the whole line.
Hence the considerable weight given to joint condition reports, and here the third route of the module on deciding documents is met in its purest form. Distinguishing natural deterioration from an aggravation caused by a movement requires knowing the exact state before departure. With no prior document the insured cannot establish that the crack did not exist, and the exclusion absorbs the file without any clause having been breached. The condition report does not reduce the exclusion: it fixes its boundary, which comes to the same thing in money.
Monumental works installed outdoors take the case to its extreme and make it almost philosophical. They are made to endure time; deterioration is the material's intended behavior, and the line between patina and damage ceases to be physical and becomes aesthetic. An owner who has a bronze cleaned may destroy a value that ageing created, which is the exact inverse of the restoration seen in the second module. There, repairing lowered the value by a notch; here, returning something to new can lower it far more, and deliberately.
One inversion deserves flagging because it surprises everyone. Public indemnity schemes, met in the loans module, sometimes admit a more favorable reading of this exclusion, precisely to make possible loans of fragile and prestigious objects that no insurer would take on those terms. An object can therefore be better protected while travelling than at home, which contradicts everything the nail to nail module led one to expect. Nobody designed that inversion; it results from two logics meeting that do not speak to each other.
In practice the exclusion cannot be removed and should not be negotiated, but its boundary can be documented. A photographed condition report, completed with technical imaging and above all REPEATED over time, turns inherent vice into a measured quantity: one no longer argues whether the wood was moving, one shows how much it moved between two dates and what was added to that slope on the day of the transport. It is the same discipline depreciation required, for the same reason, and it serves here a second time: conserving, proving, and now bounding an exclusion.
A seventeenth-century panel, agreed value 850,000 euros, is lent to an exhibition. It travels in a climate-controlled crate. On arrival an eighteen-centimeter split is found in the wood, following the grain. The insurer's expert concludes the panel had a known predisposition given that species and age, that the split follows a pre-existing defect, and that a sound panel would not have split under the same transport conditions. The lender's expert replies that the split did not exist at departure and appeared in transit. The last condition report dates from 2014 and contains only overall photographs. Restoration and depreciation are assessed at 190,000 euros.
Both experts are right, and that is exactly what makes the file hard: the predisposition is real and the journey did trigger the split. The question is therefore not who is telling the truth but what the drafting makes of an excluded cause contributing to the damage. If the wording defeats cover as soon as an excluded cause contributes, the lender loses the whole 190,000 euros. If it provides for apportionment between the inherent share and the accidental one, the argument moves to a percentage and becomes quantifiable. That sentence was worth reading before the loan, and it can no longer be renegotiated. The second point is evidentiary and is the only one the lender could act on: the last report dates from 2014 and holds only overall views, which allows neither showing that no incipient split existed nor measuring how far the defect had progressed in eleven years. A recent report, with technical imaging, and above all a series of reports tracing a slope, would have transformed the discussion: one would no longer ask whether the wood was moving, one would show by how much, and the departure from that curve on the day of transport would be read off it. One remark remains that does not help the lender but illuminates the line: had this exhibition fallen under a public indemnity scheme, the exclusion might have received a more favorable reading, and the same object would have been better protected travelling than at home.
- 01On the oldest objects the inherent vice exclusion removes the most probable damage from cover: the policy bears on rare events.
- 02The difficulty is not the principle but the boundary: a shock does not split a sound panel and does split a predisposed one, and both causes are true together.
- 03Depending on the wording, a contributing excluded cause defeats the whole claim or is apportioned, and the gap between those readings is among the line's largest.
- 04With no prior report the insured cannot establish the defect did not exist: the report does not reduce the exclusion, it fixes its boundary.
- 05On an outdoor work, deterioration is the material's intended behavior: returning it to new can destroy a value that ageing created.