Sutton v. American Fire Insurance

Citations

• 188 Pa. 380
• 41 A. 537
• 1898 Pa. LEXIS 620

Syllabus

<p>Insurance — Fire insurance — Proofs of loss — Specific objections — Belay in making objections — Waiver.</p> <p>Where the assured under a policy of fire insurance makes an apparently honest effort to specify with particularity his loss, as required by the policy, it is the duty of the insurance company, with reasonable promptness, to particularize wherein the assured fails to meet the condition.</p> <p>Where preliminary proofs of loss have been transmitted to an insurance company and received by it the next day, and no reply thereto is made, or any special defects therein pointed out, until fifty days thereafter, the delay is equivalent to a waiver of all objections to the form of the proof for defects therein.</p> <p>Fire insurance — Proofs of loss — Evidence—Objections to evidence.</p> <p>In an action upon a policy of fire insurance where the court has passed upon the. proofs of loss as sufficient, and subsequently the plaintiff offers them as evidence of the amount of the loss, the defendant company in order to effect their exclusion must object, not to the form of proof of loss, but to their competency as evidence of the amount of the loss. If it fails to do so, and makes no request to the court for an instruction that the jury shall not consider them, a verdict and judgment in favor of the assured will not be reversed by the Supreme Court.</p>