Cummings Wholesale Elec. Co., Inc. v. Home Owners Ins. Co.

Decision Date21 February 1974
Docket Number73-1062 and 73-1070.,73-1061,No. 73-1049,73-1049
Citation492 F.2d 268
PartiesCUMMINGS WHOLESALE ELECTRIC CO., INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HOME OWNERS INSURANCE COMPANY et al., Defendants-Appellees. James BAYLOR, Plaintiff and Counter-Defendant-Appellee, v. OTTO ELECTRIC COMPANY, INC., et al., Defendants. DELPHI COMMUNITY SCHOOL BUILDING CORP., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NORTHEASTERN INSURANCE COMPANY OF HARTFORD et al., Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Henry J. Price, Stephen K. Smith, Indianapolis, Ind., for appellants in No. 73-1049.

William M. Evans, Indianapolis, Ind., for appellants in Nos. 73-1061 and 73-1062.

Alan H. Lobley, D. Robert Webster, Charles J. Todd, Indianapolis, Ind., and Lewis N. Mullin, Delphi, Ind., for appellants in No. 73-1070.

Charles W. Linder, Jr., Sydney L. Steele, James W. Riley, Jr., Indianapolis, Ind., for appellees Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co., Northeastern Ins. Co. of Hartford, and Allstate Ins. Co.

Nicholas C. Nizamoff, Richard H. Riegner, William A. Wick, Indianapolis, Ind., for James Baylor as amicus curiae in No. 73-1070 and appellee in all other cases.

Before CUMMINGS and STEVENS, Circuit Judges, and GRANT, Senior District Judge.*

Rehearing En Banc Denied March 25, 1974.

CUMMINGS, Circuit Judge.

These appeals involve common issues concerning plaintiffs' rights against the reinsurers of the insolvent Home Owners Insurance Company, which had issued certain surety bonds in Indiana.

In No. 73-1049, plaintiff Cummings Electric furnished more than $120,000 worth of materials to Otto Electric Company, which became insolvent. Home Owners had written surety bonds for Otto Electric. Home Owners in turn had reinsurance agreements with the three defendant reinsurers. Home Owners also became insolvent and was undergoing liquidation in Illinois. Plaintiff obtained a default judgment against Home Owners on August 27, 1971. Through negotiations with its liquidator, the default judgment was vacated and a consent decree filed nunc pro tunc as of April 14, 1972, against the liquidator. Plaintiff filed an amended complaint on April 17, 1972, to join the defendant reinsurers who had been ceded portions of Home Owners' risks on the surety bonds. Judge Noland granted the reinsurers' and liquidator's motions to dismiss the amended complaint without prejudice in an order not containing any reasons for the dismissal.

In Nos. 73-1061 and 1062, two Indiana public school building corporations filed counterclaims against Home Owners. They were obligees on 1969 performance bonds securing the completion of electrical work to be done by Otto Electric on two new public high school buildings in Indiana. These counterclaims sought the recovery of all costs and expenses incurred by the schools in completing the electrical work for their high school buildings following the default of Otto Electric. On December 17, 1971, the defendant school building corporations filed their amended supplemental counterclaim seeking judgment against the three reinsurance companies and the liquidator of Home Owners. In his two orders dismissing the counterclaimants' actions without prejudice, Judge Steckler explained:

"This dismissal does not operate as an adjudication upon the merits, and Counter-Claimants and Third-Party Plaintiffs are free to pursue their claim in the proper forum, i. e., the Illinois liquidation proceedings of Home Owners Insurance Company brought in the Circuit Court of Sangamon County, Illinois."1

In No. 73-1070, another Indiana public school building corporation entered into a contract with Otto Electric Company for work to be performed in constructing Delphi Community High School. Otto Electric entered into a performance bond and labor and materials bond with Home Owners as surety for $344,888. After partial performance Otto Electric defaulted and plaintiff expended $176,146.70 to complete the unperformed work. Plaintiff sued the reinsurers without joining the liquidator of Home Owners. In an unreported opinion granting the reinsurers' motion to dismiss, Judge Eschbach held that the liquidator of Home Owners was an indispensable party and could not be joined because of the April 8, 1971, injunction of the Circuit Court of Sangamon County, Illinois, restraining all persons with claims against Home Owners from asserting any claim against the liquidator except in the Illinois liquidation proceedings. As in Nos. 73-1061 and 1062, the court stated that plaintiff was free to pursue its claim in the Illinois liquidation proceedings of Home Owners.

These various appeals involve the proper construction to be given to Ind. Code 1971, § 27-1-13-6 (Burns § 39-4307), which was enacted as Section 175 of the 1935 Indiana Insurance Law and provides as follows:

"Limitation of risks. — No company organized to make any kind or kinds of insurance included in class II and class III of section fifty-nine § 39-3501 shall take, on any one 1 risk of whatever nature, a sum exceeding one-tenth 1/10 part of its paid-up capital, surplus, and contingent reserves, if any, if a stock company or one-tenth 1/10 part of its surplus and contingent reserves, if any, if other than a stock company. No portion of any such risk or hazard which shall have been reinsured in a corporation authorized to do insurance business in this state shall be included in determining the limitation of risk prescribed in this section: Provided, That this section shall not apply to marine insurances, or to companies organized to make life insurance.
"No stock or mutual insurance company transacting fidelity or surety business in his state shall expose itself to any loss on any one 1 fidelity or surety risk or hazard in an amount exceeding ten per cent 10% of its capital, surplus and contingent reserves, if any, unless it shall be protected in excess of that amount by: (a) Reinsurance in a company authorized to transact the fidelity or surety business in this state, provided that such reinsurance is in such form as to enable the obligee or beneficiary to maintain an action thereon against the company reinsured jointly with such reinsurer and, upon recovering judgment against such reinsured, to have recovery against such reinsurer for payment to the extent in which it may be liable under such reinsurance and in discharge thereof; or (b) the cosuretyship of such a company similarly authorized; or (c) by deposit with it in pledge or conveyance to it in trust for its protection of property; or (d) by conveyance or mortgage for its protection; or (e) in case a suretyship obligation was made on behalf or on account of a fiduciary holding property in a trust capacity, by deposit or other disposition of a portion of the property so held in trust that no future sale, mortgage, pledge or other disposition can be made thereof without the consent of such company; except by decree or order of a court of competent jurisdiction: Provided: (1) That such a company may execute what are known as transportation or warehousing bonds for United States internal revenue taxes to an amount equal to fifty per cent 50% of its capital, surplus and contingent reserves, if any; (2) that, when the penalty of the suretyship obligation exceeds the amount of a judgment described therein as appealed from and thereby secured, or exceeds the amount of the subject-matter in controversy or of the estate in the hands of the fiduciary for the performance of whose duties it is conditioned, the bond may be executed if the actual amount of the judgment or the subject-matter in controversy or estate not subject to supervision or control of the surety is not in excess of such limitation; and (3) that, when the penalty of the suretyship obligation executed for the performance of a contract exceeds the contract price, the latter shall be taken as the basis for estimating the limit of risk within the meaning of this section. No such company shall, anything to the contrary in this section notwithstanding, execute suretyship obligations guaranteeing the deposits of any single financial institution in an aggregate amount in excess of ten per cent 10% of the capital, surplus and contingent reserves, if any, of such corporate surety, unless it shall be protected in excess of that amount by credits in accordance with subdivisions (a), (b), (c) or (d) of this paragraph." (Italics supplied.)

This statute was apparently modeled on a comparable New York statute (Laws of 1920, ch. 563, § 3, now as amended McKinney's Consol. Laws, ch. 28, Insurance Law §§ 47, 315). However, we have found no cases or legislative history under either statute to illuminate the meaning of the critical, italicized proviso.

The Indiana legislature required that these reinsurance policies be "in such form" as to permit the obligee or beneficiary to sue the reinsured and reinsurer jointly. Paragraph 14 of the General Reinsurance Agreement sufficiently satisfies this requirement.2 Because of the mandate of Section 4307, we reject the reinsurers' argument that Paragraph 14 is inconsistent with Article XIV of the Separate Reinsurance Agreements3 and hence was not incorporated therein by Article XI thereof.4 This does not require a strained construction of Article XIV, since it only relates to payments during insolvency, and as will be seen, Section 4307 grants no preference and authorizes no direct action after liquidation proceedings begin. Because no part of any of the agreements other than Paragraph 14 of the General Agreement gives the insured any rights against the reinsurers, we hold that these agreements provide such rights only to the extent necessary to comply minimally with Section 4307.

The various insured claimants in these cases were given a direct right of action against the reinsurers by virtue of Section 4307 and...

To continue reading

Request your trial
6 cases
  • Grimes v. Crown Life Ins. Co., 86-1905
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit
    • September 16, 1988
    ...(dismissal of federal court suit appropriate in context of state insurance liquidation proceedings); Cummings Wholesale Elec. Co., Inc. v. Home Owners Ins. Co., 492 F.2d 268 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 883, 95 S.Ct. 149, 42 L.Ed.2d 123 (1974) (same); Aims Enterprises, Inc. v. Muir, 6......
  • Foremost Life Ins. Co. v. Department of Ins., 1-179A12
    • United States
    • Indiana Appellate Court
    • September 27, 1979
    ...recognized that a preference could only be created by express legislative action. See Cummings Wholesale Electric Company, Inc. v. Home Owners Insurance Company, 492 F.2d 268 (7th Cir. 1974) Cert. denied, Delphi Community School Building Corp. v. Northeastern Insurance Company of Hartford, ......
  • Foremost Life Ins. Co. v. Department of Ins.
    • United States
    • Indiana Supreme Court
    • September 24, 1980
    ...beneficiaries, and insureds, had no preference over any other creditors of the insolvent carrier. In Cummings Wholesale Elec. Co. v. Homeowners Ins. Co., (7th Cir. 1974) 492 F.2d 268, cert. denied, 419 U.S. 883, 95 S.Ct. 149, 42 L.Ed.2d 123, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a ......
  • Turner Const. Co. v. Seaboard Sur. Co.
    • United States
    • New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division
    • March 16, 1982
    ...of a reinsured surety bond, with a direct right of action on the agreement against the reinsurers. In Cummings Wholesale Elec. Co., Inc. v. Home Owners Ins. Co., 492 F.2d 268 (7th Cir.), the court was confronted with, inter alia, the issue of whether reinsurance agreements vested the oblige......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT