Definition
A clause appearing in French marine insurance policies that functions as a license authorizing a vessel to touch and trade at intermediate ports during a voyage. The clause effectively expands the permitted scope of the insured voyage beyond a direct route, protecting coverage when the vessel makes stops that would otherwise constitute a deviation — a departure from the agreed or customary course sufficient to void the policy.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, historically bounded term. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in nineteenth-century maritime insurance cases and treatises, particularly those involving French or French-influenced commercial law. Its practical significance lies in its relationship to the doctrine of deviation: without such a clause (or its equivalent), an insurer could disclaim liability upon any unauthorized port call. The de faire echelle clause neutralized that defense.
The term appears in American case law primarily through New York commercial court decisions of the early to mid-1800s, when French insurance forms were occasionally used or referenced in Atlantic trade disputes. Researchers working in this period should be alert to the fact that American courts sometimes applied French insurance terms by analogy, not as direct authority, which can obscure whether a court is genuinely interpreting a French-form policy or merely borrowing the conceptual framework.
The functional equivalent in English-language policies is the liberty clause or the touching and trading clause. If you are researching deviation doctrine more broadly, do not limit searches to this French term — the doctrine and its carve-outs developed substantially in English and American sources under different vocabulary.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are in near-perfect agreement, which is unsurprising given the narrowness of the term. All three sources define it as a clause in French marine insurance policies authorizing intermediate stops, and all three cite the same New York authority: American Insurance Co. v. Griswold, 14 Wend. 491 (N.Y. 1835). That convergence suggests the term had a stable, settled meaning in the Anglo-American legal vocabulary and was not subject to meaningful doctrinal dispute.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the broader context: French marine insurance practice from which the clause originated, the relationship of the clause to the general deviation doctrine, or whether the clause was customary in all French policies or only in those covering multi-port trading voyages. Researchers needing that context will need to look beyond the dictionary sources to nineteenth-century treatises on marine insurance, including Marshall's Treatise on the Law of Insurance and Arnould on Marine Insurance, both of which address deviation and liberty clauses at length.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is French in origin and was primarily operative in French insurance practice. In American courts, its appearance is largely confined to New York commercial disputes of the early nineteenth century, reflecting New York's role as the dominant maritime insurance market of that era. English law developed parallel concepts under different terminology; researchers should not assume that de faire echelle clauses in French-form policies will be interpreted identically to liberty clauses in English-form policies.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Marine Insurance (deviation doctrine, liberty clauses, scope of coverage); Deviation (Maritime Law) (consequences of unauthorized port calls on insurance coverage).