The Initial Risk Statement of the insurance contract: Analysis of the legal regime and brief comment on Superior Courts’ decisions

Vanessa Louro

Keywords

insurance contract; pre-contractual information duty; liability for providing information; initial risk statement; intentional omissions or inaccuracies; negligent omissions or inaccuracies.

Abstract

The Decree-Law n. º 72/2008, of 16th of April, approved the Legal Regime of the Insurance Contract. This new regime entered into force in our legal order on the 1stof January 2009 and intends to regulate all the insurance contracts drafted beyond that date. This new legal regime has consolidated the previous existing rules of insurance contract but also introduced certain modifications and enlightened some doubts about pre-existing rules. The present work aims to ascertain the changes concerning the Initial Risk Statement instated by new legal document in comparison with the previous framework, included in the 429th article of Commercial Code. We intend to investigate not only the shift occurred in a legal and theoretical sense, but also the alteration that arose in more practical level, and in that aspect, analyze of a handful of decisions by our Superior Courts on this subject.