Franklin Life Ins. Co. v. People ex rel. Yancey
| Decision Date | 18 February 1903 |
| Citation | 66 N.E. 379,200 Ill. 619 |
| Parties | FRANKLIN LIFE INS. CO. v. PEOPLE ex rel. YANCEY. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Appellate Court, Fourth District.
Action by the people, on relation of James Yancey, against the Franklin Life Insurance Company to recover a penalty for an alleged discrimination in rates. From a judgment in favor of plaintiff affirmed by the Appellate Court (103 Ill. App. 554), defendant appeals. Affirmed.Wm. W. Clemens, for appellant.
L. D. Hartwell, State's Atty. (Pillow & Smith and Ed M. Spiller, of counsel), for appellee.
This was an action in debt against the appellant company by the people, on the relation of one James Yancey, instituted by R. R. Fowler, the state's attorney of Williamson county, to recover the penalties provided by section 3 of the act entitled ‘An act to correct certain abuses and prevent unjust discrimination of any by life insurance companies,’ etc., approved June 19, 1891 (Hurd's Rev. St. 1899, p. 978), for the violation of the provisions of section 1 of the act, in, as the declaration alleged, allowing or paying to one Ed. L. Dwyer a special rebate of the premium on a policy of life insurance issued by said company to said Dwyer. The cause was heard before the circuit court sitting without a jury, and judgment was entered against the appellant company in the sum of $500 as a penalty for the violation of the said statutory provisions, together with the costs therein accruing. The Appellate Court for the Fourth District affirmed the judgment, and this a further appeal which has been perfected to bring such judgment of affirmance in review in this court.
The action of the trial court in refusing to hold certain propositions of law presented by the appellant company is urged as the only ground for asking a reversal of the judgment. These propositions were, in substance, that even if an agent of the company who canvassed for and obtained the application for the insurance policy was shown by the evidence to have violated the said section 1 of the act in question in the manner charged in the declaration, before the appellant company could be adjudged liable to the penalties prescribed by section 3 of the act it must be shown by the evidence that the company had either authorized the inhibited act to be done by its agent, or had knowledge the agent would so transactits business, or colluded or connived at such acts, or that after the act it approved or ratified the same. We think the court ruled correctly in refusing to hold these propositions as announcing the correct principles of law relative to the case. A corporation is an artificial or intangible body. The government which has created the corporation, or which permits a foreign corporation to exercise corporate functions or transact corporate business in its territory, has the power to regulate the corporation, whether foreign or the creature of our statutes, in the exercise of its franchise for the public good, to prescribe conditions under which it may do business, and to subject it to the police power of the government as fully as if it were a natural person. Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Co. v. Loomis, 13 Ill. 548, 56 Am. Dec. 471;Bank of Republic v. County of Hamilton, 21 Ill. 53;Ruggles v. People, 91 Ill. 256;Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Co. v. Jones, 149 Ill. 361, 37 N. E. 247,24 L. R. A. 141, 41 Am. St. Rep. 278; Hurd's Rev. St. 1899, p. 438, c. 32, § 26. The purposes of the creation of a corporation must be executed through natural persons acting as its agents. It is only through the acts of a natural person, acting as its agent, that a corporation may incur liabilities declared by the law, or become subject to penalties denounced by the statute, for an act inhibited to be done. A violation of a statutory provision by a corporation must of necessity consist of an act of an agent of the corporation. Any agent having authority to do any act for the...
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