A single word in a reinsurance treaty just decided a roughly $61 million dispute - and the London market is paying attention.
In a judgment handed down on April 23, 2026, Mr Justice Waksman ruled that the word "event" in a reinsurance treaty's limits clause carries its ordinary causal meaning - not a narrow, contract-specific definition that would have slashed recoveries for the reinsured. The decision in WRBC Corporate Member Ltd v AXA XL Syndicate Ltd & Ors [2026] EWHC 939 (Comm) lands squarely in the ongoing fallout from Covid-19 event cancellation claims still working through the London market.
The case pitted WRBC Corporate Member Limited - the sole underwriting member of W.R. Berkley Syndicate 1967 at Lloyd's - against a panel of reinsurers including AXA XL Syndicate Limited, Brit UW Limited, XL Bermuda Limited, and Liberty Corporate Capital Limited, among others. At stake were 174 individual losses from WRBC's contingency book, all stemming from conferences, exhibitions, and events cancelled because of government restrictions across seven jurisdictions - six US states and England.
The two multi-line excess of loss treaties, dated April and May 2019, contained a limits clause covering losses "arising out of one event." WRBC said that "event" meant the government measure that caused the cancellations - a reading that would let it bundle all losses in each jurisdiction together and apply just one $1 million deductible per group. The reinsurers pushed back, arguing that "event" should be read through the treaty's Class B definition of "Any One Event" - essentially, each individual cancelled conference. Under that reading, most of the 174 losses would fall below the deductible, leaving WRBC with a fraction of its claim.
The numbers told the story. On WRBC's construction, its net claim against the reinsurers stood at roughly $61 million. On the reinsurers' reading, only about $2.1 million remained outstanding.
Justice Waksman sided with WRBC. He found that the phrase "arising out of one event" is a well-established aggregation formula pointing to the cause of losses, not the loss itself. He noted that the defined term "Any One Event" did not actually appear in the limits clause, no cross-reference linked the clause back to that definition, and applying the definition to certain contingency sub-classes - like confidential life cover - would produce results he called "absurd." The court also observed that stripping aggregation from contingency business would be commercially odd, given that in a pandemic scenario, it was the class most likely to be hit.
The court went further, noting that the "Any One Event" definition appeared to have been carried over from an earlier aggregate treaty without much thought as to whether it still worked in the excess of loss structure.
On the separate aggregation issue, the court worked through each of the 174 losses to identify which specific government measure caused each cancellation - following the framework set out in Stonegate Pub Co Ltd v MS Amlin Corporate Member Ltd. The vast majority of claims were allowed and aggregated within their respective jurisdictions.
The case was heard over seven days in January and February 2026. WRBC was represented by Clifford Chance LLP. DWF Law LLP acted for the reinsurers.
