Book Reviews

Contractual Indemnities, Wayne Courtney, 2015, Hart Publishing, ISBN 9781509905010 Promises of indemnity are commonplace in contracts of insurance and in other types of commercial contracts. This work by Wayne Courtney, a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney, provides a detailed consideration of the law of indemnities. A text on this area of commercial enterprise is well overdue. The book is usefully divided into three parts: introduction, general principles and particular indemnities. An examination of the general principles commences with a consideration of the nature of the promise of indemnity, that is, what the promise requires the indemnifier to do to protect the indemnified party and the manner in which performance is required to be effected to discharge that obligation. It then proceeds to methodically consider the manner in which the scope of indemnity provisions is construed both in England and in Australia including any general limitations and exclusions which may apply expressly or by necessary implication. No consideration of “general principles” would be complete without a chapter which reviews issues which can arise upon enforcement including the interesting question of the enforcement of indemnities for the benefit of third parties. The final part of the work contains an examination of the principles and issues of construction that relate to four particular forms of indemnity: