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The Life Assurance Act 1774 (14 Geo. 3 c.48, also known as the Gambling Act 1774〔''Halsbury's Laws'', vol.44(1) (reissue), "Statutes", para 1268.〕〔Long title: ''An Act for regulating Insurances upon Lives, and for prohibiting all such Insurances except in cases where the Persons insuring shall have an Interest in the Life or Death of the Persons insured''; short title given by the Short Titles Act 1896.〕) was an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of Great Britain, which received the Royal Assent on 20 April 1774.〔''Annual Register for the year 1774'', p.212-3〕 The Act prevented the abuse of the life insurance system to evade gambling laws. It was extended to Ireland by the Life Insurance (Ireland) Act 1866, and is still in force. Prior to the Act, it was legally possible for any person to take out life insurance on any other person, regardless of whether or not the beneficiary of the policy had any legitimate interest in the person whose life was insured. As such, the system of life insurance provided a legal loophole for a form of gambling: an insurance policy could be taken out on an unrelated third party, stipulating whether or not they would die before a set date, and relying on chance to determine if the "insurer" or "policy-holder" would profit by this event. ==Provisions== The Act was relatively short, with only four sections: *Section 1 sought to deal with these abuses by stipulating that henceforth no assurance was to be made on the life of any person or persons, or on any other event, where the person for whose use the policy was made had "no interest" in the matter, or if it were clearly done for the intent of "gaming or wagering", and that any assurance made contrary to this requirement was deemed null and void. *To aid in preventing this, section 2 required that any such policy include the names of the persons who stood to benefit by it. *Section 3 stipulated that, in all cases where the insured party had a legitimate interest in the life or event, they did not recover more than the value of their interest from the policy, guarding against the related abuse of deliberate overinsuring. *For the avoidance of doubt, section 4 stated that the Act did not extend to legitimate insurances of ships, goods or merchandise. Gaming or wagering in relation to British ships and merchandise was already prohibited by the Marine Insurance Act 1745. Sections 2 and 3 were amended by the Statute Law Revision Act 1888, and the requirement in section 2 to name the beneficiaries of a life insurance policy was relaxed by section 50 of the Insurance Companies Amendment Act 1972, to allow insurance by reference to a defined class or description of person. The defendant in the important contract law case of ''Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company'' (1898) had attempted unsuccessfully to rely on this section to avoid paying £100 to the plaintiff.〔''Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company'' () 1 QB 256〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Life Assurance Act 1774」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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