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Insurable Losses: Fortuity, Loss in Progress, and Known Risk. “The purpose of insurance is to insure against a [fortuitous] loss.” That’s why insurance contracts are “aleatory” contracts, which means that the duty to perform depends on the “happening of some event that is not certain to occur and that is not within the control of either party.” An aleatory contract involves a “hazard, chance, or risk.” More than a century ago, the Michigan Supreme Court stated it perfectly: one can’t insure a sinking ship. A good place to start this Insurance and Indemnity 101 series is with “fortuity” and the “loss-in-progress” and “known-risk” doctrines. These are complementary doctrines that address the fundamental question whether a particular peril can be insured. These are not “policy defenses,” because they do not depend on the language of any policy, but are based on the fundamental nature of insurance and what kinds of losses are insurable.