Garrison v. Farmers' Mut. Fire Ins. Co. of Salem County

• Decision Date: 13 November 1893
• Citation: 28 A. 8,52 N.J.E. 91
• Parties: GARRISON v. FARMERS' MUT. FIRE INS. CO. OF SALEM COUNTY.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

28 A. 8

52 N.J.E. 91

GARRISON

v. FARMERS' MUT. FIRE INS. CO. OF SALEM COUNTY.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Nov. 13, 1893.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Action on a policy of insurance by William F. Garrison against the Farmers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Salem County. After verdict for plaintiff, defendant obtained a rule to show cause why a new trial should not be granted. Rule discharged.

Argued February term, 1893, before the CHIEF JUSTICE, and DIXON, MAGIE, and REED, JJ.

J. H. Huffman and W. D. Edmunds, for plaintiff.

C. H. Sinnickson and M. P. Grey, for defendant.

REED, J. This action is upon a policy of fire insurance. The policy was originally written in July, 1888, for one year. It was renewed yearly, the last renewal having been made in July, 1891, for one year. The property insured was destroyed by fire on the following January 30th. The main defense interposed at the trial was that there was, in the policy, a misdescription of the property insured, which avoided the contract of insurance.

The building was described as a sawmill. The evidence showed conclusively that at the time the policy was originally written, and for nearly three years afterwards, a part of the building used as a sawmill was also used as a sash and blind factory. It was uncontradicted that the rate of insurance for a sash and blind factory was nearly, if not quite, double the rate for a sawmill. One of the conditions attached to the policy is this: "If he [the insurer] should cause the subject insured to be described in the policy otherwise than it really is, so that the same will be charged at a lower premium than otherwise proposed, or such description be false or fraudulent, such insurance will be void and of no effect." The plaintiff, however, insisted that there was no such use of any part of the building on or after July, 1891, the date of the last renewal. The trial justice charged that the policy in respect to description of the insured property must be read as of the date of the last renewal; that the question for the jury was whether, at that date, the building was used as a sash and blind factory. If it was not so used, then the description of the building as a sawmill was correct. The jury found that it was used then and subsequently only as a sawmill. To this part of the charge an exception was sealed.

We see no error in this construction of the contract. It is indeed true that the terms of the old contract were continued in the new; but the risk assumed under the old contract expired with it, and each renewal was the beginning of a new risk. Noyes v. Insurance Co., 54 N. Y. 668. So far as the descriptive clauses were concerned, they are properly applicable to the insured premises at the time of the assumption of the new contract.

Again, it was the subject-matter of an exception that the court charged that falsity in description, which under the terms of this condition avoided the policy, was an intentional false description. But, Inasmuch as the falsity of the description of the insured building was ignored by the jury in its general finding for the plaintiff, there is no ground for the exception. The effect of the verdict appears in this way:...