Home Insurance & Banking Co. v. Lewis

Citations

• 48 Tex. 622

Syllabus

<p>1. Insurance.—The principle, that equity will reform a written contract, where there has been an innocent omission or insertion of a material stipulation contrary to the intention of the parties, is as applicable to a policy of insurance as to any other form of contract.</p> <p>2. Insurance—Warranty—Estoppel.—When the agent of an insurance company, to whom an applicant correctly stated the description of his property, makes a mistake in reducing the application to writing, which is signed by the applicant, with a warranty of its correctness, and the mistaken description is made a part of the policy, the act of the agent will operate as an estoppel to prevent the company from making the warranty available as a defense.</p> <p>3. Insurance—Mistake.—An applicant for a policy of insurance described his property as two-story frame buildings on lots 11,14, and 15, in block number 309. The evidence disclosed that applicant owned lots, corresponding in number, on block number 609, on which were situated buildings belonging to applicant, of the description given, while block number 309 was wholly unimproved : Held—</p> <p>1. That there was enough of the description which was true to correct the mistake in the number of the block by construction, if open to correction at all.</p> <p>2. The fact that the rules of the company prohibited it from taking a risk of over $3,000 on one block, and that amount had already been taken on other houses on block number 609, but in favor of a party who had forfeited his policy by removal before the mistake in the new policy was made, cannot vary the rule which would permit the mistake to be corrected. The materiality of the number of the block to the making of the contract of insurance was a question of fact for the jury.</p> <p>4. Insurance—Mistake.—A charge which assumes that the insurance company will be regarded as waiving a misdescription in the application, of the property insured, on account of the fact that the president of the co