Johns v. Arizona Fire Insurance

Citations

• 76 Wash. 349
• 136 P. 120
• 1913 Wash. LEXIS 1818

Syllabus

<p>Appeal — Review—Findings. Upon a trial de novo, findings of the trial court upon conflicting evidence are entitled to great weight and will not be disturbed unless clearly against the weight of the evidence.</p> <p>Insurance — Officers anj Agents — Fraud—Secret Profit — Evidence — Sufficiency. The evidence sustains findings that the secretary and general manager of an insurance company which was in financial distress, negotiated a reinsurance contract, which was to have been the basis of a twenty-five per cent discount to his company, and that he secretly arranged with the reinsuring company for ten per cent of the discount to be paid to him personally for services and expenses in reorganizing the field (to be thereafter earned by him) as general manager for the reinsuring company to which position he was appointed, where it appears that the negotiations were by correspondence, the letters on behalf of the two companies made no reference to the 10 per cent payment, which was privately proposed at the same time through the medium of the secretary’s son and accepted in the same way, and the general manager of the reinsuring company made statements indicating that his company had been willing at first to allow 25 per cent discount, which was afterwards changed to 15 per cent to the company and 10 per cent to its secretary, and that the same was kept secret from the directors and other officers of the company.</p> <p>Same — Fraud—Evidence—Admissibility. In an action to- recover from a former officer of an insurance company a secret profit collected by him on negotiating a reinsurance contract with another company, in which the defendant claimed that the payment was made to him for services to be thereafter performed and expenses incurred, declarations of the general manager of the other company are admissible against the defendant, although not made in his presence, as tending to prove the true character of the transaction upon the issue of fraud, where both particip