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 painting is insured at an agreed value of 2 million euros. Three years later the artist's standing has fallen and the work would trade around 1.4 million. It is destroyed by fire. What does the insurer owe?
2 million, because agreed value is a convention that governs total loss
The insurer owes the agreed 2 million, with no appraisal. Agreed value is neither a ceiling nor an estimate: it is a convention by which the parties choose a number they hold as true in order to be able to contract, and market wordings themselves state it is fixed for the purposes of the contract only, with no representation as to sale price. The line therefore knowingly departs from the indemnity principle, and does so because the alternative, a contested appraisal of a work that no longer exists, produces litigation rather than justice. The answer invoking the indemnity principle is the one intuition dictates, and it is precisely the one the convention exists to displace. As for a contested appraisal, it is exactly what agreed value removes.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee2. The same painting is not destroyed but torn. On what basis is the claim settled?
On the cost of restoration plus the depreciation that remains after it
Agreed value governs total loss and nothing else. On partial damage one returns to the cost of restoration and then to the depreciation that remains once the work is repaired, and it is that second line which carries most of the loss on serious damage. The practical consequence offends every collector's intuition: someone insured well above the market is perfectly protected against fire and much less so against a tear, since the convention that over-protects them in one case does not operate at all in the other. Abandonment against agreed value does exist in some wordings, but only beyond a proportion of damage, never as the general regime for partial loss.
Glossary entry · depreciation3. Why does the market pay less for a restored work, even when the restoration is excellent and invisible to the naked eye?
Because the intervention is documented and surfaces at every later sale, through the condition report and ultraviolet examination
What the market penalizes is the existence of the restoration, not its quality or its visibility. Every serious sale comes with a condition report, ultraviolet examination reveals repaint, and information circulates in a market where the same objects pass before the same experts. The buyer pays a premium for integrity and withdraws it as soon as an intervention is documented. The consequence is disconcerting and operational: between an excellent restoration and a merely competent one, the difference in value is smaller than imagined, which moves the trade-off toward the extent of the intervention rather than the studio's reputation. The artist's standing, for its part, does not move because one of their works was damaged.
Glossary entry · depreciation4. A wording caps depreciation at 10% of the sum insured. What is the cap's actual effect?
It transfers to the insured the depreciation above the cap, that is, precisely the tail of the most severe damage
On small damage the cap never bites and nobody notices it. It bites at exactly the moment depreciation becomes the principal loss: a severely damaged work can lose twenty-five percent of its value after restoration, and the insured recovers only ten. The cap therefore does not bound an uncertainty, it transfers a tail, which is the very share the insured believed they had insured. It also produces an inversion of interests one has to see coming: beyond a certain level of damage, the restoration route becomes less favorable to the insured than a total loss, while remaining more favorable to the insurer.
Glossary entry · depreciation5. A panel insured on an all-risks basis is downgraded by a catalogue raisonné committee to workshop production. Its market value collapses. Does the policy respond?
No, the cover requires PHYSICAL loss or damage, and an opinion is neither
The deciding word is not 'all risks', it is 'physical'. Policies in this line cover all risks of physical loss or damage, and a de-attribution produces neither: the material has not moved by a micron, only an opinion changed. This is pure financial loss, which a damage cover does not reach. It is therefore not a matter of exclusion, and the distinction matters: an exclusion can be argued, an absence of physical damage offers no purchase at all. The event that destroys the most value in the art market is thus foreign to that market's principal cover, and the surprise this causes comes from the name given to the product.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance6. The same panel, insured at an agreed value of 3 million and never revised since the de-attribution, is destroyed by an accidental fire when it is worth only 400,000 euros. On the question of value alone, what does the insurer owe?
3 million, the convention not having been revised and governing total loss
A convention does not evaporate because the world changed its mind. So long as the contract has not been revised, the agreed value remains 3 million and governs total loss, exactly as it would have had the artist's standing merely fallen. The resulting asymmetry deserves to be faced: destroying a de-attributed work is fully insured while the de-attribution itself is not insured at all. The ground on which an insurer can act is therefore not value but disclosure, a de-attribution being a material change in what it bound itself to. That is also why periodic revision protects the insured as much as the insurer: it removes the gap that makes their own claim look questionable.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee7. The risk survey of the borrowing museum recommends moving the stores out of the basement during the flood season, and the lender accepts the recommendation in its report. What has the lender just done?
It may have turned a good practice into a condition of its own cover, while performance depends on a third party over which it has no authority
An accepted recommendation can become a condition of the contract, and breach of a condition does not have the effects of a mere departure from good practice: depending on the wording and the applicable law, it can defeat cover. What the loan adds, and what neither module says on its own, is that the party signing the condition is not the party performing it: the lender accepts, the borrower acts, and the lender discovers at claim time that it has warranted somebody else's discipline. The answer shifting the burden to the borrower confuses two planes: the loan agreement may give a recourse, but a recourse plays out afterward and does not restore cover that has fallen away. The one about premium is accurate on the mechanism, getting out of a basement weighs far more than climate does, and that is exactly why the recommendation exists; it simply answers a pricing question where the question is what the acceptance did to the cover.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance8. A loaned work is damaged in transit and indemnified under the lender's nail to nail cover, which pays for its restoration. Eighteen months later a title claim succeeds and the work is returned to its rightful owner. What becomes of the indemnity already paid?
The insurer repaired real damage for the benefit of an interest established never to have existed, and subrogation does not catch it up, there being no third party responsible for the damage
The crossing is here and it is uncomfortable: nail to nail cover does exactly what is expected of it, covering the journey without distinguishing segments, and it was title and not the journey that was missing. Insurable interest is assessed at inception and at the loss, and restitution does not extinguish it as of its date, it establishes it never existed: that retroactivity is the point the most tempting answer inverts. Subrogation is the adjuster's natural reflex and it presupposes a third party responsible for the DAMAGE, which the claimant is in no way. What to retain for practice sits upstream of the loss: on a loan, the provenance file is an insurance document as much as a curatorial one, and a gap named at inception is a priceable risk where a gap kept quiet is a defect in the contract.
Glossary entry · interet-assurable9. A painting consigned to a gallery for sale is destroyed by a fire originating in the building's electrical installation, which the gallery does not own. Does the gallery's bailee liability cover respond?
No, a bailee's liability is a duty of care, and no fault is established here
A bailee owes a duty of custody and care, not a promise that nothing will happen. A fire from an installation it is not responsible for does not engage its liability, so its liability cover does not respond. The consequence is systematic and worth retaining: it is in the heaviest losses that a bailee's liability is least likely to be established, since large losses are rarely the ones somebody caused. An owner relying on the gallery's insurance is therefore uncovered precisely where they believed themselves best covered, and it is their own policy that answers. The gallery's stock section does not respond either, for a different reason: a work received on consignment is not its stock and its cost is zero.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance10. On one and the same 800,000 euro painting consigned to a dealer, the owner is insured for 800,000 and the dealer for the 200,000 euros of commission it expected. Is this over-insurance?
No, because the indemnity principle is assessed interest by interest, not object by object
One object can carry several distinct insurable interests, and each is indemnified for ITS loss. The owner's is the value of the property; the dealer's is twofold, its possible liability to the owner and its own expected gain, a personal economic loss belonging to nobody else. The sum of the interests can therefore exceed the object's value without any double indemnity. The point of collision lies elsewhere, in other insurance clauses: if both policies declare themselves second payer in the same terms, neither declares itself first, and the circularity is no longer resolved by the contracts but by the applicable law, with the delays that implies. The clause written to avoid a double payment then produces a deadlock.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee11. An automatic cover for new acquisitions covers purchases for sixty days. A painting bought for 900,000 euros was not declared within that period and burns on the eightieth day. What exactly does the collector lose?
It keeps cover but loses the agreed value: an undeclared object cannot have one, and the loss settles at market value, with the very expert argument agreed value existed to avoid
The question bears on what the certification's first objective asks you to separate, agreed and declared value, and on the moment one tips into the other. The declaration period is this line's only purely administrative condition, and it is usually delegated to whoever handles the paperwork rather than to whoever buys: missing it does not remove the cover, it removes the valuation convention. You end up arguing an artist's market before an expert, over a destroyed painting, which is exactly the situation agreed value removes. The answer removing all cover confuses a valuation condition with a condition of existence, and the one seeing a mere formality is the one the department that let the sixty days pass tells itself.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee12. A collection of collectible watches and gold coins is insured at agreed value. That market publishes prices and comparable sales every week. What happens to the agreed value?
It keeps its full contractual force but loses its justification: a marked gap against comparables is hard to defend, at placement as at renewal
Agreed value exists because a painting has no comparable: it replaces an impossible appraisal with a convention. Where comparables exist and are published, the convention survives legally and dries up economically, and that is a nuance the certification's first objective requires you to hold. Believing it becomes unenforceable credits the market with a power over the contract it does not have; believing it revises itself invents a mechanism no policy carries, revision being precisely what the insured must ask for. As for the split between total and partial loss, it does not depend on the nature of the object but on what agreed value governs, and it never governs partial damage.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee13. A painting listed on the schedule for years was sold eighteen months ago, with nobody removing it. It burns at its new owner's premises. What happens to the former insured?
It is not indemnified: the insurable interest disappeared with ownership, and it paid premium to cover something that could no longer be indemnified to it
The certification's fifth objective bears on insurable interests, and it governs both the cases where they add up and those where there is none left. Being on the schedule and paying premium never created an interest: it is the other way round, the interest grounds the cover and the premium is its consideration. The answer indemnifying then claiming against the new owner is the most tempting because it has the shape of subrogation, but it rests on a payment that was not owed, and the new owner committed no fault. Pro rating has the same flaw, applied to a date when no loss had occurred. It is the mirror image of an undeclared acquisition: a current schedule works both ways.
Glossary entry · interet-assurable14. A painting is damaged then restored. The insured claims depreciation. No condition record exists from before the damage. What becomes of that head of claim?
It collapses for a purely evidential reason: with no dated prior state, depreciation cannot be measured, and a stable climate serves first to make condition records comparable over time
Depreciation is this line's hardest head to prove, and it is most often lost without any clause having operated: it is lost for want of a starting point. That is what links two modules read weeks apart, depreciation and preventive conservation, since conserving and proving are the same discipline. Answering that agreed value replaces the missing record confuses what it governs, total loss, with what it abandons, partial damage. The cap bounds an established head and establishes none: presuming it at its cap would reverse the burden of proof in favor of the party that documented nothing.
Glossary entry · depreciation15. A fire reaches twelve works in one collection. The wording caps depreciation. Which sentence in the contract changes the total by a large ratio?
The one saying whether the depreciation cap applies per object or per event, and it is not renegotiated after the loss
On a single object, the distinction between a per-object and a per-event cap goes unnoticed; on twelve, it divides or multiplies the head by a factor that is anything but marginal. It is the crossing of mass loss and depreciation, and it only shows up by reading both clauses together, which nobody does at placement. Sums insured are set per object, and that is precisely why a collection can be fully insured piece by piece and turn out underinsured in the one scenario that empties the room: the limit is set per event.
Glossary entry · depreciation16. An adjuster can restore more heavily to reduce residual depreciation. How far is that worth doing?
Up to a point: heavy restoration reduces one head and increases the other, and past that point spending more on the work costs more in total
The two heads do not move in the same direction, and that is what makes the trade-off real rather than rhetorical: the market penalizes the existence of a restoration far more than its quality, so a heavy intervention leaves a trace that the condition report and ultraviolet examination will reveal at every later sale. The absolute answers, always or never, share the flaw of treating two coupled heads as independent. As for the cap, it bounds what the insurer will pay for depreciation, which shifts the burden onto the insured rather than naming an optimum: it says nothing about what to spend on the work.
Glossary entry · depreciation17. On a market where an object's condition carries a published grade, what happens to depreciation compared with a painting?
It becomes the easiest head to prove, whereas it is the hardest on a painting: the gap between two grades is read in published transactions
The certification's second objective asks on what base depreciation is computed, and the answer depends on what can be proved. On a painting, the prior state is a record someone made or did not make; on a graded object it is public data, and the loss of value is read in the gap between two grades. It is one of the rare places where the discipline shifts from appraisal toward grading documents and history. Believing the grade removes depreciation confuses measuring with abolishing: the object is still worth less, it is merely easier to say by how much.
Glossary entry · depreciation18. A policy is sold as "all risks". A de-attribution divides a panel's value by twenty. The insured invokes the word "all". Which word actually decides?
"Physical": a property policy requires physical harm, and a de-attribution involves none
The certification's third objective asks you to classify a de-attribution, and that classification turns on a single word the sales formula never highlights. "All risks" widens the causes of damage, it does not change the nature of what must be harmed. The object is intact, still on the wall, and its value has collapsed: no property policy responds. The answer resting on fortuity is not absurd and aims wrong: a catalogue raisonné committee is indeed an external and uncertain event, which helps not at all since the gap lies elsewhere. It is also what makes de-attribution and a title claim symmetrical, one leaving ownership without value, the other value without ownership.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance19. The module notes that the market re-examines a work when it moves. What practical consequence does that have for an insured?
Value collapses at the precise moment one seeks to realize it, and the gap with the agreed value closes only through declaration and revision, never through cover
The difficulty with de-attribution is not only that it is uninsurable, it is that it surfaces at the worst moment, a sale or a loan, when the appraisal is redone. The insured therefore carries an agreed value still legally owed until revised, and an object no longer worth it: destroying that object is indemnified at the agreed value, de-attributing it is not indemnified. That is the only ground an insurer can act on, and it acts only through revision. Avoiding movement does not remove the doubt, it defers it; waiting for a spontaneous revision by the insurer is waiting for a step no policy imposes on it.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance20. A loaned work is crated on a quay when a flood strikes the municipality, which is the subject of an official order. Where can the file fall?
Between the two logics: nail to nail follows the object, the order follows the place, and a crated work may be neither at the lender's nor at the borrower's
It is the most useful crossing in the whole cycle, and it rests on two mechanisms sorting the world differently: nail-to-nail cover follows an object, an official order names municipalities and a period, thus writing a geography. The certification's fourth objective bears on the instant custody changes hands, and that instant is also when the geographical anchor is lost. Believing the order covers everything within the municipality skips the first question, which is not whether you are covered but whether the policy falls within the scheme's scope. And a policy covering the natural event directly responds with no order, no municipality condition and on the agreed value: the line referring to the scheme decides everything.
Glossary entry · clou-a-clou21. A loan agreement refers, for one leg of the journey, to a public indemnity scheme. What more must it say, and why?
Which scheme covers which leg, what happens if the scheme declines, and who brings the recourse: a public scheme has neither insurer nor premium, and a scheme that does not subrogate stops the loss where it fell
A public scheme is not a policy: no insurer, no premium, regulatory conditions, an administrative process and a budget timetable. The least-seen consequence is the exclusion: the private policy often excludes the period covered by the scheme, and that exclusion bears on its APPLICABILITY and not on its intervention, so a scheme that declines can leave the exclusion standing. The second is recourse: with no subrogation, the lender must bring it itself against the third party at fault. Believing a difference in conditions policy bridges the gap assumes comparable conditions, which a public scheme does not offer, and mostly produces false comfort.
Glossary entry · clou-a-clou22. A crate is received on April 3 and only opened on the 19th. The work is cracked. The lender's policy lapsed on the 10th. What does that calendar produce?
A file hanging on the distinction between discovery and occurrence: a crate received unopened proves nothing about the work's condition, and letting a policy lapse can extinguish a loss already sustained
A receipt for a closed crate attests that a crate arrived, nothing more, and that is why a condition report signed and timestamped at every handover is what allows damage to be attributed to a leg. The two answers naming a policy settle the very question of fact that is open, one presuming the damage later, the other presuming it earlier, when nothing says so. And the lapse date adds a difficulty the certification's fourth objective asks you to anticipate: a shortage most often attaches to its discovery, so a policy allowed to lapse can carry away losses already sustained.
Glossary entry · clou-a-clou23. A work entrusted to a bailee disappears with no fault established. The owner counts on the bailee's liability. What happens?
It does not respond: it is a duty of care, and in the heaviest losses, which are rarely faulty, it answers for nothing
The certification's fifth objective asks you to separate insurable interests in one object, and that separation only earns its keep at the moment one of them does not respond. The right question to put to a bailment contract is this one, and only this one: if the object disappears tomorrow with nobody at fault, who receives how much, and from whom? It shows at once that the owner insures the object's value, the bailee its liability and its expected commission, and that those three interests do not merge. The answer limiting recovery to the commission mixes two distinct interests of the same bailee. There is also a case that surprises, misappropriation by a person the object was entrusted to: that is not theft but infidelity, and the closest circle sits outside the theft cover.
Glossary entry · interet-assurable24. A collection is insured object by object, each sum matching the agreed value. A fire reaches the whole room. Where does the structure prove insufficient?
On the per-event limit: sums are set per object, the limit is set per event, and a collection fully insured piece by piece can be underinsured in the one scenario that empties the room
Each sum is right and the total is not, which is disconcerting the first time you meet it: the object-by-object check, which is the one people run, cannot reveal the shortfall, because the shortfall is of another kind. You have to look at the per-event limit, and to calibrate it, at a probable maximum loss, which is a conventional figure following the assumed barrier. That assumption is almost always missing beside the number, and it is what to ask for. The answer declaring the agreed value unenforceable invents an exception that does not exist: it remains owed, it is merely bounded downstream by a limit nobody had looked at.
Glossary entry · principe-indemnitaire25. A survey report, a condition report and a schedule of values arrive in the same envelope, from the same expert. How does one know what each does to the contract?
By asking two questions of each, what happens if it is FALSE and what happens if it is ABSENT: vitiating the contract points to incorporation, defeating cover points to a condition, losing the argument points to evidence
Nothing in a document's appearance says which route it takes; only the policy wording says so, and it says so elsewhere. The test is two questions because the three routes produce three regimes and three remedies: incorporation turns statements into terms, a condition can defeat cover regardless of any causal link with the loss, and evidence obliges nothing but can be replaced by nothing. The three wrong answers look for the classification in the document itself, which is exactly what does not work: form, signature and date are clues the condition route most often contradicts, since it runs through a technical report nobody rereads looking for the sentence that became a requirement.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance26. Of the three routes by which a document acquires force, which demands the most from the collector personally, and why?
Evidence: it cannot be negotiated, no clause being able to create proof, and it demands a habit where the other two demand a rereading
The asymmetry is the module's point: the first two routes are argued at placement, one negotiates what is incorporated and what is required rather than recommended, and a signature settles it. The third is practiced, and a collector who photographs and dates at every movement has settled the route their broker cannot settle for them. The answer about the condition is right on severity and wrong on the question asked, which is about effort and not risk: that is the trap of a module where the most dangerous and the most demanding are not the same route. The one handing everything to the broker describes exactly what leaves the evidence missing on the day of the loss.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance27. A collection carries a per-object deductible, calibrated with an isolated loss in mind. A fire damages sixty works. What does that figure produce?
Sixty deductions, which can absorb the entire damage to modest pieces: an indemnity close to zero across a whole part of the collection
On a collection the question is not how much is deducted but how many times, and the answer is not in the number: it is in the word beside it. A deductible calibrated for an isolated loss behaves the opposite way on the event the collection actually fears. The single deduction answer describes a per-event deductible, which collectors often believe they bought. The one capping per event describes a MIXED form, which exists and answers precisely this defect: giving it here is the error of an attentive reader who retained the remedy and attributes it to the simple structure. And grouping by location is a fourth word from the same family, which does not substitute for the one in the contract.
Glossary entry · franchise28. A collector has negotiated a careful depreciation clause. On modest damage, what happens to that head of loss against the deductible?
The deductible can consume it entirely: the head invented to cover the irreparable is the first to vanish, and precisely on the most numerous losses
On partial damage the deductible comes off restoration cost plus depreciation, and on modest damage it can absorb all of the latter. That is the crossing these two modules produce together and neither states alone: the collector who read the depreciation clause and negotiated it well may never see its effect, because the parameter neutralizing it sits in another line of the same contract. The two answers isolating the head from the deductible, by exempting it or ranking it first, describe a separation the wording does not make. The one confining the deductible to total loss inverts the domain: on total loss the computation is trivial, on partial damage it decides.
Glossary entry · depreciation29. A collection policy is placed in co-insurance. A ten percent line disputes and does not pay. What happens?
The commitment is several and not joint: that share stays with the insured, and a policy settled at ninety percent is a policy ten percent unpaid
Each insurer commits for its own share and that share alone, and this is not a flaw in the structure: it is what makes it possible, no insurer agreeing to guarantee the others' shares. The follow clause answer is the most instructive because it touches the arrangement's real boundary: what is followed is generally SETTLEMENTS and not necessarily decisions on cover itself, so following holds on ordinary files and strains precisely on serious or disputed ones, which are the files the peace of mind was bought for. The two answers having the others or the leader make up the share transpose a joint liability that does not exist here, and they leave the insured discovering at settlement an exposure it never accepted.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance30. A tower was assembled over several renewals, with different carriers. A large loss exhausts the primary and attaches the first excess layer. What can change?
The wording itself: a depreciation cap or an agreed value revision clause can differ from one layer to the next, so the same loss settles differently by layer
An excess layer follows the primary's form only as far as its own conditions allow, and alignment of clauses is guaranteed by nobody except whoever placed the risk. A placement schedule aligns capacities and rates, it shows nothing of the wordings, and that is precisely where everything this certification has established plays out: revision of agreed value, the base and cap of depreciation, conditions precedent arising from a survey report. The answer seeing only a change of adjuster names a real and secondary effect: each attachment brings new counterparts, the loss does not get bigger but more numerous, and that is why a large collection loss counts in years.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee31. A loaned work is damaged by a mishandling by the organizer's team, and the exhibition does not open. How do the two covers behave?
The damage is covered at the lender and the cancellation may be excluded at the organizer, a cause internal to the insured being neither external nor beyond its control
The link between the two covers is not automatic and that is the whole mechanism: a cancellation cover almost always requires the cause to be external and beyond the insured's control, and mishandling by the organizer's team is precisely within it. The same fact is therefore covered on one side and excluded on the other. The answer excluding on both sides extends to the property cover a condition that does not belong to it: the custodian's fault does not defeat the owner's cover, it opens at most a recourse. The one shifting everything to liability forgets the lender holds its own cover and need not establish fault to rely on it.
Glossary entry · interet-assurable32. A loan agreement requires the organizer to take out cancellation cover. What does that give the lender?
Nothing direct: requiring someone to insure and being insured are two different things, and only being named as beneficiary bridges them
It is the same distinction met over the deposit agreement, and it recurs here because it recurs every time: an agreement merely imposing an insurance obligation has protected the organizer against itself and done nothing for the lender, which is not a party to the insurance contract. The direct action answer names a mechanism that exists in some laws and for some covers, and is never presumed from a loan agreement clause. The one promising reimbursement of committed costs confuses the organizer's heads of loss, lost costs and missed revenue, with those of a lender that bears neither.
Glossary entry · clou-a-clou33. A living artist's work is damaged. The adjuster selects the cheapest restoration. What can close that route?
The moral right to respect for the work's integrity, which was not acquired with it and gives a third party a voice in the file
This is the only module in this certification where a stakeholder can oppose what insurer and insured decided together: the right does not belong to whoever paid, it does not transfer with the painting, and the refusal therefore comes neither from the insured nor from the contract. One must then either find a protocol the author accepts, or treat the file as a loss restoration cannot reduce, which changes the whole economics of the settlement. The mitigation answer is a good adjuster's and is exactly the reflex this module inverts. The last two name obstacles internal to the contract, liftable by agreement between the parties, where this one cannot be.
Glossary entry · principe-indemnitaire34. An installation consists of low value industrial components, an artist's certificate and a protocol for realization. A fire destroys the certificate, the components being intact. Where does that leave things?
A perfectly ordinary physical damage claim on the item that carries the value: the paper is covered, and it is what makes the assembly a work
The result is odd and its reach has to be measured: the cover requires physical damage, a certificate is a physical object, so its destruction is an ordinary claim, whereas losing the ability to realize the work, occurring otherwise, would not be. The paper is covered and the concept is not, and it is the paper that carries the value. This is not a drafting anomaly, it is what happens when a cover written for things meets a work whose thing is not the subject. The answer sizing the loss on the matter destroyed applies the intuition built on every previous module, where severity was proportionate to the violence of the event, and that is exactly what this module unsettles.
Glossary entry · fine-art-insurance35. A work depends on a projector whose model is discontinued and whose parts have vanished from the market. It drifts toward being unexhibitable. How does that qualify?
Inherent vice, but an inherent vice that does not lie in the work's matter: it lies in the disappearance of an outside supply chain, and insurance covers accident and not ageing
Obsolescence adds a deterioration that is not an accident, and the displacement is the point: the ageing is not the object's but the world's around it, which makes the characterization counter-intuitive while leaving it on the wrong side of the cover. The total loss answer correctly describes the economic outcome and mistakes the regime, the costliest error here since it leads to notifying a claim that is not one. The force majeure answer borrows contractual liability vocabulary for a coverage question, and would fail anyway: unforeseeability is not what the cover requires, accidental character is.
Glossary entry · vice-propre36. A work is sold and paid for, and awaits collection at the seller's. It is destroyed that evening. Who bears it?
Often nobody: the seller no longer owns it so its policy no longer covers, and the buyer's automatic cover frequently requires possession or control
The nail to nail module dealt with the movement of CUSTODY, this one with the movement of OWNERSHIP, and they do not move at the same instant. Insurable interest follows ownership: a policy covering property belonging to the insured stops covering the object the moment it ceases to belong to it, even hanging on its own wall. The gap has a recognizable shape, sold, paid, awaiting collection, and the most exposed object in the whole chain, packed and handled by people in a hurry, is the one nobody covers. Depending on the wordings on each side, the same texts produce an overlap or a gap, which makes the cross-reading indispensable and rare: which is why the equal overlap answer is not absurd, it is simply the happy case that cannot be assumed.
Glossary entry · interet-assurable37. In an auction, who decides which of the two policies is on risk after the hammer falls?
The auction house's conditions of sale, written by a third party to the insurance contract, which set a moment and a period after which the buyer bears the risk
The hammer transfers something, but not necessarily risk, and neither the seller's nor the buyer's insurer had any say: the auction house's conditions decide. The answer having them pass together is common sense and exactly the simplification the module undoes, since a sale breaks into conclusion, payment and delivery and risk can pass at any of the three. The one letting the buyer decide by collecting forgets the deadline: past it, the buyer bears the risk whether it collected or not. The question stays the one from the bailment module, if the object is destroyed tonight who bears it and under which policy, and the answer sits in three documents that never cite each other.
Glossary entry · valeur-agreee38. Three heirs hold a painting in undivided ownership. One of them insures it for the full value. What is that policy worth?
A fraction of it is worth nothing, precisely the fraction belonging to the others: insurable interest divides proportionally and the excess is not enforceable as insurance
The collection and stock module dealt with two DIFFERENT interests in one object; this one deals with the same interest DIVIDED, and the remedies differ. A policy taken out by one for the whole is not a generous policy, it is a policy a fraction of which is worth nothing. The answer declaring it void in full is too strong and instructive: the insured does have an interest, up to its share, and it is the excess that is worthless. The one invoking ownership of the entire thing borrows a formula from the law of undivided ownership and draws an insurance consequence it does not carry, interest being measured in value and not in right of use.
Glossary entry · interet-assurable39. The policy names a single co-owner. The insurer pays. That co-owner does not share out. What can the others do?
Nothing against the insurer, which paid the person it was due to pay: what is owed thereafter belongs to the co-ownership agreement and not to the insurance contract
Insurance and ownership run on two separate sets of pipes, and nothing joins them by default: an insurer that paid the person it was due to pay has performed. The answer seeking to set the settlement aside relies on a correct fact, the excess was not enforceable as insurance, and draws a consequence the completed payment no longer allows: naming everyone had to happen beforehand. The two preventive steps are modest, name all co-owners or name one of them expressly for whom it may concern, AND say which of the two was done. The commonest case is in fact the unsettled estate, where the policy keeps naming a person who no longer exists, sometimes for years, because the premium keeps being collected.
Glossary entry · principe-indemnitaire40. What events change the insured interest without the work moving, and why are they dangerous?
A death, a partition and a transfer of a share: no inventory detects them since they leave no trace in the room where the work hangs
Ownership can change without the object moving, and on investment vehicles where shares change hands regularly that drift is continuous by construction. No crate was opened, no carrier was involved, the work still hangs on the same wall, and yet the transferred fraction is no longer covered by a policy insuring property belonging to the insured. The three other answers name real events, all of them VISIBLE, which trigger a rereading by themselves because someone organizes them: that is exactly what the first three lack. A drift in the description of the risk adds to it, a work held undivided by three heirs being able to circulate between three homes without any of them feeling they changed anything.
Glossary entry · declaration-de-risque