Jones v. German Ins. Co. of Freeport, Ill.

• Decision Date: 15 December 1899
• Citation: 81 N.W. 188,110 Iowa 75
• Parties: JONES v. GERMAN INS. CO. OF FREEPORT, ILL.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

110 Iowa 75

81 N.W. 188

JONES

v.GERMAN INS. CO. OF FREEPORT, ILL.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 15, 1899.

Appeal from district court, Union county; H. M. Towner, Judge.

Action on policy of insurance. The defendant appeals from judgment on verdict for the plaintiff. Affirmed.Sullivan & Sullivan, for appellant.

D. W. Higbee and Copenheffer & Allen, for appellee.

LADD, J.

How shall the exact time of “noon” be determined by “common” or “standard” time? At Creston, Iowa, the latter is 17 1/2 minutes faster than the former, and, as the policy sued on covered the property destroyed “for one year from the 18th day of September, 1896, at twelve o'clock at noon, to the 18th day of September, 1897, at 12 o'clock at noon,” and the fire broke out on the last day at about 11:45 o'clock a. m., common time, or at about 2 1/2 minutes after 12 o'clock standard time, the rights of the parties depend on the correct solution of this question. The trial court instructed the jury that: “The usual means of determining time of day, when such time is referred to in ordinary contracts, is by the standard of the meridian of the sun, or the sun time. The presumption is that common or solar time is the time intended by the parties, when reference to the time of day is made in contracts, unless a different standard is shown to have been intended. It may be taken as a presumption from the use of the language, ‘12 o'clock at noon,’ that the parties intended to mean 12 o'clock sun time, as that phrase is commonly understood.” The exigencies of some lines of business may require the adoption of a system which shall definitely fix the same hour and minute at a particular instant at localities widely separated in longitude so that the delay of and occasional mistake in computation may be avoided. Indeed, experience has demonstrated the inestimable importance to railroad companies of giving direction to employés everywhere on their lines of road with absolute certainty as to time. Without such certainty, safety would be imperiled. And it may be that, because of the relation of transportation companies to the business interests of the community, and the inconveniences of two systems of computing time, it would be wise to use the “central standard time” throughout the state. But, in the absence of statutory enactment, we are not quite ready to concede that, for the mere convenience of these companies, nature's timepiece may be arbitrarily superseded. The apparent daily revolution of the celestial body, caused by the rotation of the earth, has, from the remotest antiquity, been employed as a measure of time. The successive returns of the sun do not, it is true, furnish a uniform measure of time, owing to the slightly variable velocity of the sun's motion and inclination of its orbit to the equator. Certain corrections are necessary, and therefore the imaginary mean sun has been introduced with a uniform velocity. The difference between the apparent or true solar time and the mean solar time, as shown by clocks and watches in ordinary use, is slight. These indicate the time as 12 o'clock when the sun is at meridian at any locality. The law and usage of the country have recognized this method of fixing time for generations, and it cannot be lightly set aside on the mere pretext that certain lines of business so demand. If this were not so, a purely artificial standard of time, reckoned from the ninetieth meridian of longitude, might as well have been adopted establishing “central standard time” for the whole country, instead of dividing the map into four sections, with eastern, central, mountain, and Pacific standard time. Thus, Saturday might in part be turned into Sunday, and Sunday into Monday, and the period of the night when the civil day begins--midnight--made to depend on locality alone. The supreme court of Georgia, in deciding that a verdict was returned on Sunday, when standard time was somewhat slower than common time, said: “It seems idle to waste words in saying that the standard of time fixed by persons in a certain line of business cannot be substituted at will, by persons in a certain locality, for the standard recognized by the statutes of the state, as well as the general law and usage of the country, especially when it is considered that such an arbitrary and artificial standard could as easily fix 5 o'clock for midnight as it could 20 minutes past 12, as was done in this case. Local custom cannot in this way change Sunday into Saturday. To expect courts of justice, officers of the law, and the public generally, especially that large class of the population who do not live in cities or at railroad stations, to go to the railroads for the time which is to guide them in the performance of their duties under the law, when they have in the heavens above them a certain standard by which to ascertain or regulate the time, or permit them at will to follow two standards of time, would be highly impracticable, and would be productive of great uncertainty and confusion in the administration of the law. Thus, the legality of elections might be made to depend upon conflicting proof of local custom, for what might be considered a legal election in one precinct might be regarded as illegal in the next precinct, because of the time of opening or closing the polls, or the people of a precinct might differ among themselves as to this.” Henderson v. Reynolds (Ga.) 10 S. E. 734, 7 L....