Kister v. Lebanon Mutual Ins.

Citations

• 128 Pa. 553
• 18 A. 447
• 1889 Pa. LEXIS 815

Syllabus

<p>1. A clause in a fire insurance policy providing that “if any broker, or other person than the insured, shall have procured this insurance to be taken by the company, such broker or other person shall be considered the agent of the insured and not of this company,” does not include an agent authorized by the company to take the insurance.</p> <p>2. One who filled up an application, attested it as agent, sent it to the company with a report on the proposed risk signed by himself as agent, received from the company and delivered to the applicant the policy applied for, collected the premium and remitted it to the company in a formal monthly report, deducting commissions, and afterward collected assessments on the policy, giving receipts which the company recognized, must be regarded as the company’s agent in the transaction.</p> <p>(a) By the provisions of an insurance policy the application therefor, taken by an agent of the company and containing the answers of the applicant to certain questions, with a warranty of their truth, was made a part of the policy; and it was provided that if any of the representations made by the assured were false, the policy should be void: certain of the answers contained in the application were untrue.</p> <p>3. In an action by the insured upon such policy, evidence is admissible to show that at the time the application was written the insured gave to the agent of the company true and correct answers to said questions, but the agent wrote down other answers than those so given to him, and the insured signed the application in ignorance of this fact.</p> <p>4. That the policy when issued was accompanied by a copy Of the application, and the insured by reading it might then have discovered that his answers were not correctly written down, was a consideration to be addressed to the jury; for the company cannot repudiate the fraud of its agent and thus escape from its contract, merely because the insured in good faith accepted the act