Home Insurance Company v. Tanner
| Citation | 220 F.2d 41 |
| Decision Date | 04 May 1955 |
| Docket Number | No. 15230.,15230. |
| Parties | The HOME INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant, v. Thurmond TANNER, Appellee. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) |
Wm. B. Gunter, Gainesville, Ga., Estes Doremus, Alex W. Smith, Atlanta, Ga., E. D. Kenyon, Gainesville, Ga., Smith, Field, Doremus & Ringel, Atlanta, Ga., Kenyon, Kenyon & Gunter, Gainesville, Ga., for appellant.
Sidney O. Smith, Jr., Joe K. Telford, A. C. Wheeler, Wheeler, Robinson & Thurmond, and Telford, Wayne & Smith, Gainesville, Ga., for appellee.
Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, HOLMES, Circuit Judge, and DAWKINS, District Judge.
This appeal from a judgment entered in a cause tried to the court without a jury presents a single question of law. This is whether, under Georgia law, a parol agreement to make a new contract of fire insurance, by attaching to an existing policy an endorsement increasing the limits of liability, is valid so as to give rise to an actionable claim in tort or contract for the damages resulting from its breach.
The question comes here in this way. Appellee, Thurmond Tanner, filed his complaint against appellant, The Home Insurance Company, seeking in equity to reform a policy of fire insurance, No. 6171,1 by requiring the insurance company to enter an endorsement on its policy increasing to $29,902.75 the $10,500 liability provided for therein. The complaint further sought the recovery of $19,940.75, the difference between the two sums under the policy as reformed. Before the suit, the insurance company, denying that it was liable for any more, had paid Tanner $10,500, its maximum liability under the policy as written. The policy in question was issued on January 16, 1953, and provided coverage in the maximum amount of $10,500 on Tanner's feed bag inventory.
Tanner testified that on January 23, 1953, he told Marion Whaley, agent of the insurance company, to increase the limit of coverage to $25,000. Whaley testified that Tanner did not on that date or at any other time in 1953 request him to increase the limit of coverage or to endorse the policy in any way. The policy was not endorsed but remained as issued on January 16, 1953. The fire occurred on February 8, 1953, destroying an inventory of bags valued at $29,902.75.
The case was heard by the district judge without a jury and at its conclusion he filed, in the form of findings of fact and conclusions of law2 a carefully considered and thoroughly worked out, but unreported, opinion, and entered judgment for the plaintiff on the basis of an increase in the liability limit to $25,000.
Here the appellant, insisting that Tanner and the Home Insurance Company did not, indeed could not under the law of Georgia, make a valid parol contract to insure, urges upon us that the evidence demanded a verdict and judgment for the appellant.
In support of this insistence, appellant takes for its text the trial court's conclusion, "Georgia law must be applied to a Georgia contract of insurance, and in Georgia by statute a contract of fire insurance must be in writing, it must be wholly in writing and not partly in parol, and must express the essentials of the contract, indeed the entire contract".
Contending that Sections 56-801 and 56-2133 of the Georgia Code and the Georgia cases cited in the opinion of the trial judge, render parol contracts for fire insurance in Georgia invalid just as the Statute of Frauds and the Georgia cases construing and applying it render invalid parol contracts for the sale of land, and quoting from Neely v. Sheppard, 185 Ga. 771, 196 S.E. 452, 455, "in relying upon this oral option, the plaintiff is certainly in no better position than if he were standing upon an unconditional oral agreement to sell and purchase", appellant urges upon us that in the instant case plaintiff, in relying on the oral agreement to increase insurance coverage to $25,000, is in no better position than if he were relying upon an unconditional oral contract of insurance in the amount of $25,000.
Arguing that the trial judge has attempted to make an untenable legal distinction between a contract of insurance and a contract to insure, as here, by issuing an endorsement to be attached to an existing policy, with the practical result that, while one cannot be bound by an oral contract of insurance, he would be by an oral contract to insure, having the same effect as an oral contract of insurance, he urges upon us that Georgia law does not recognize, indeed it forbids, any such distinction. Insisting that this is the crux of this case, he argues with conviction that there was no valid and binding agreement on January 23, 1953, and that such an agreement cannot give rise to an actionable breach. Citing Aronoff v. United States Fire Ins. Co., 178 Ga. 97, 172 S.E. 59, holding that an agent of a company had no authority to act for it in any manner except by a writing endorsed on the policy, it presses and represses its argument that the court has raised a liability out of an invalid promise, has found the appellant guilty of actionable wrong for the breach of an agreement which is proscribed by the public policy of Georgia as stated in its code and the decisions of its courts.
Contesting the district judge's conclusion that Section 56-213 applies only to insurance companies organized in Georgia, and citing as to the contrary, Nowell v. Mayor and Council of Monroe, 177 Ga. 648, 171 S.E. 136; and Delaware Ins. Co. v. Pennsylvania Fire Ins. Co., 126 Ga. 380, 55 S.E. 330, the appellant, quoting from Newark Fire Ins. Co. v. Smith, 176 Ga. 91, at pages 95 and 96, 167 S.E. 79, at page 81, 85 A.L.R. 1330,4 in which the court held that Georgia is unique in requiring contracts of insurance companies to be in writing, argues that if liability can arise out of an oral agreement for insurance, as claimed here, then Georgia will have in effect abandoned its unique position to join the other states.
Appellee, insisting that the trial court's opinion is unanswerable, that the authorities it cites, especially Roberts v. Germania Fire Ins. Co., 71 Ga. 478, and Seabrook v. Underwriters' Agency, 43 Ga. 583, as well as general principles of fair and right dealing, unite to support his judgment, urges upon us that we should affirm it for the reasons the trial judge gave.
In further support of this view, appellee, citing Farmers & Merchants Bank v. Winfrey, 89 Ga.App. 122, 78 S.E.2d 818, in which a suit was brought against a bank for the failure of one of its officers to procure insurance on an automobile held as security on a bank loan, argues that if such an oral agreement can be sued on against the promisor, there is no reason for the view that it is not actionable against the insurance company itself.
We do not think so. As we read and understand the Georgia decisions, we agree with appellant's view: that plaintiff stands on his claim against the insurer, for breach of an oral agreement made with its agents to procure insurance, in no better or different case than he would stand if the suit were for the breach of an oral contract to convey land; and that if we affirm the decision of the trial court we in effect declare and give an entirely new meaning to the statutes and policy of Georgia. Nor are we impressed by appellee's argument that an oral agreement by a bank, warehouseman, automobile dealer or finance company to procure insurance is the same as an agreement by an insurer or its agent to insure. We realize that the able and careful district judge has long been familiar with Georgia law and that his views should be accorded great weight, and it is with reluctance that we are unable to accept them. We are, nevertheless, constrained to hold that, in correctly stating at its outset that the law of Georgia requires a written agreement with an insurer to support a contract of insurance, the opinion carries its own death wound with respect to the subsequent holding that the oral agreement with the agent, sworn to by the claimant, gives rise to the same liability which would have existed if the policy limits had been raised by a written endorsement thereon. This is not at all to say that the agent, if sued on the agreement as one by the agent to procure a policy of insurance, could not be personally held. Neither is it to say that we think the law of Georgia ought to be as we now state it. It is to say, though, that, as we read it, the decision and judgment below conflicts with that law, and the judgment must, therefore, be reversed and the cause remanded with directions for further and not inconsistent proceedings.
Reversed and remanded.
While I recognize, of course, that we are bound by the law of Georgia in this case, I cannot agree that Georgia law requires reversal. The trial judge, who is familiar with the law of that State and whose opinion indicates thorough study of the principles involved here, held that the appellant, through its duly authorized agent acting in the scope and pursuing the duties of his agency, was guilty of a tort for which the appellee could recover; and I think his decision is sound.
Proper presentation of my views requires the statement of facts not contained in the majority opinion. The evidence discloses, and the trial court found, that appellee was engaged in the business of buying and selling used chicken feed bags, and of processing and cleaning such bags for others. More than a year before the loss involved here, he contacted appellant's agent for the purpose of obtaining insurance coverage on the bags in his place of business; and the agent wrote a reporting form policy providing fire coverage on the inventory, up to a limit of $8,500, dated January 16, 1952. During the ensuing year, notwithstanding the provisions of the Georgia statute, and of the policy itself requiring written reports and endorsements, oral reports of inventory were made; and on three...
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...to the settled principles which in Georgia should and do control such situations. In an analogous case from that state, Home Insurance Co. v. Tanner, 5 Cir., 220 F.2d 41, this court upon full consideration held that, under Sections 56-213 and 56-801, requiring contracts of insurance to be i......