Sutton v. American Fire Insurance
Sutton v. American Fire Insurance
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
The defendant company on June 11,1894, issued to plaintiff a policy of insurance against loss by fire in the sum of $3,400 on his farm buildings, dwelling house, barn, household and kitchen furniture, produce in barn, horses and mules; the term of the policy was three years. On February 7,1897, the buildings and part of the property contained therein were destroyed by fire; the plaintiff claimed his loss was $3,099. He gave immediate notice of the fire to the company; as the policy required that within sixty days thereafter he should under oath furnish the company with a full and detailed schedule of the property destroyed, he, on March 25, following, transmitted to the company such statement or schedule as was deemed by him a compliance with this requirement; from communications of defendant’s adjuster to plaintiff’s attorney it appeared that these proofs were not satisfactory, so on June 7 following, he sent to
The trial, therefore, after the ruling of the ceurt, proceeded and plaintiff offered in evidence to the jury, the proofs of loss furnished to the company, March 25,1897. No purpose in this offer was disclosed; none requested by either defendant’s counsel or the court; as the sole burden on plaintiff, at that juncture, was, to establish the extent of his loss to the jury, the offer of the preliminary proof could have been for no other purpose. Clearly they were neither competent nor relevant to such purpose ; when they had been transmitted to and received by the company they had performed their office; that is, fulfilled a condition precedent to the right to sue; and if they had been objected to for that reason by defendant’s counsel the court would have been bound to exclude them. The objection, however, was not to their relevancy or competency, but because
The remaining assignments of error are without merit.
The judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- J. H. Sutton v. The American Fire Insurance Company, Philadelphia
- Cited By
- 8 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Insurance — Fire insurance — Proofs of loss — Specific objections — Belay in making objections — Waiver. Where the assured under a policy of fire insurance makes an apparently honest effort to specify with particularity his loss, as required by the policy, it is the duty of the insurance company, with reasonable promptness, to particularize wherein the assured fails to meet the condition. Where preliminary proofs of loss have been transmitted to an insurance company and received by it the next day, and no reply thereto is made, or any special defects therein pointed out, until fifty days thereafter, the delay is equivalent to a waiver of all objections to the form of the proof for defects therein. Fire insurance — Proofs of loss — Evidence—Objections to evidence. In an action upon a policy of fire insurance where the court has passed upon the. proofs of loss as sufficient, and subsequently the plaintiff offers them as evidence of the amount of the loss, the defendant company in order to effect their exclusion must object, not to the form of proof of loss, but to their competency as evidence of the amount of the loss. If it fails to do so, and makes no request to the court for an instruction that the jury shall not consider them, a verdict and judgment in favor of the assured will not be reversed by the Supreme Court.