Western Massachusetts Mutual Fire Insurance v. Girard Point Storage Co.

Citations

• 6 Pa. Super. 288
• 1898 Pa. Super. LEXIS 148

Syllabus

<p>Contract — Lex loci — Conflict of laws — Constitutional law.</p> <p>If a citizen of Pennsylvania, by a contract validly made outside of its boundaries, incurs a liability, no law of this state, can under the constitution of the United States, prevent his fulfilling that obligation, even by an act done within the state.</p> <p>Insurance — Foreign companies■ — Lex loci — Prohibitive Pennsylvania statutes.</p> <p>The issuance and delivery of Insurance policies in Massachusetts makes the contract a Massachusetts contract to be governed by the laws of that state free from the taint of illegality by reason of the existence of penal or prohibitive legislation in Pennsylvania. Com. y. Biddle, 139 Pa. 605, followed.</p> <p>Policies for property in Pennsylvania were issued in Massachusetts. These policies were canceled and the insured received a return premium. Held, in a suit to recover assessments imposed for losses, etc., incurred by plaintiff company while the policies were in force, that an affidavit was insufficient which set up as a defense that “ the plaintiff being a foreign company had not prior to placing the insurance complied with the acts of assembly of Pennsylvania regulating the way in which foreign insurance companies should undertake the insurance of property in Pennsylvania.”</p>