CL-2023-000064 - [2025] EWHC 1870 (Comm)

The U/Ws say that the reasonable policyholder would not have considered that the phrase “other competent authority” was apt to encompass either the BHA and/or the GBGB for three reasons.

First, they rely upon the ejusdem generis or the noscitur a sociis principles and say that the words “competent authority”take their colour from the types of authority preceding them, namely: “the Police Authority”, “the Government” and “any local Government body”. The argument is that a “Police Authority”, “the Government” and “any local Government body”are all organs of the state (which the BHA and GBGB are not) with coercive powers which can restrict the use of the insured’s property. If any “authority” with “jurisdiction to deal with the specific event” would qualify as a “competent authority”, the U/Ws say, that would (for example) encompass a commercial party which held intellectual property rights over a play and could exercise a contractual veto over whether it could be performed.

Second, they assert that neither the BHA nor the GBGB would have been contemplated as an “other competent authority”, because neither would have been expected to have taken “action” by reference to a “danger or disturbance” up to a mile away. The U/Ws suggest such action would be taken by those with coercive civic powers; an organ of the state (or exercising equivalent powers), not a private company acting qua sporting regulator which derives its regulatory powers from private agreements with its members. While sporting regulators might be expected to take an interest in what is going on at the Cs’ premises, the reasonable policyholder would not consider them to be responsible for taking “action”. The U/Ws rely upon the statement that the “paradigm example of a ‘disturbance’ in this context would be an affray or brawl” in the judgment of the Divisional Court in FCA v Arch (at [500]).

Third, the U/Ws submit that the above analysis is reinforced by the only other occasion in which the words “other competent authority” is used in the Policy, which is in limb (c) of the denial of access extension. That is concerned with a scenario where there has been “action…following the suspected or actual presence of a harmful device on or in the vicinity of The Premises”. It is said to be improbable that a sporting regulator would be concerned with a “suspected or actual presence of a harmful device”. That would be a matter for the police or the British Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal & Search Regiment Royal Logistics Corps.