84 Pa. Super. 532 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1924
Argued December 9, 1924. This is an action brought by the receivers of an insolvent foreign mutual insurance corporation to recover an assessment levied by its directors against a policyholder residing within this State. The policy insured defendant against loss occasioned by the prevention of *534 operation of his printing establishment, located at No. 236 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, caused by a strike of his employees at his plant there. It was issued at Baltimore, and was a Maryland contract, but the insurance covered a business plant or establishment permanently located within this Commonwealth. It had none of the characteristics of ambulatory insurance contracts, such as life and accident insurance policies, or contracts covering personal property intended for transportation. It was as fixed and stationary as fire insurance upon a building, and indemnified a resident of this State against loss by strike to a plant or business located within the State. It effected insurance on property in Pennsylvania and was just as much a transaction of business within this Commonwealth as if the company had insured the plant against fire.
The plaintiff's failed to allege in their statement that the company was authorized to do business in Pennsylvania, as is necessary to be done when the averments of the statement show a doing of business by a foreign corporation within this Commonwealth, (Phœnix Silk Mfg. Co. v. Reilly,
It was held in that case, which was an action against a policyholder of a foreign mutual fire insurance company to recover an assessment to pay losses, that inasmuch as the policy insured property in Pennsylvania and the company was not authorized to do business here, no recovery could be had in a suit based on the policy, and whether the insurance was effected in Ohio or Pennsylvania, the result was the same. The court said: "It was a contract ...... in direct violation of the laws of this State; it was the indemnification of a citizen of Pennsylvania against loss by fire on property wholly within Pennsylvania; without regard to where the contract was made, the subject of it was property within this State; it is the attempt of a foreign insurance company to do business in this State in violation of the laws of this State," p. 586. This was followed in this court in Commonwealth Mut. Fire Ins. Co. to use of Stevens, Receiver, v. Sharpless,
The appellant relies chiefly on the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Allgeyer v. *536
Louisiana,
The Supreme Court of the United States has frequently recognized the right of a state to regulate the doing of the business of insurance within its borders and to prohibit such business by foreign corporations except under the conditions fixed by statute, provided they do not interfere with interstate commerce. In Nutting v. Mass., supra, p. 556, the court said: "A state has the undoubted power to prohibit foreign insurance companies from making contracts of insurance, marine or other, within its limits, except upon such conditions as the state may prescribe, not interfering with interstate commerce." See also Hooper v. California, *537
Many of the federal cases cited above were prosecutions for violations of state insurance laws. Conviction was sustained where the company or its agent was held to be doing business in the State: Hooper v. California, supra; Nutting v. Mass., supra. It was set aside where the citizen was prosecuted for insuring his own property with a foreign insurance company in another state: Allgeyer v. Louisiana, supra. But there is a wide difference between a prosecution against a citizen for insuring his own property in an unlicensed foreign corporation and an attempt by the insurance company to enforce in the courts of this State a contract declared illegal by statute. The distinction is recognized in Swing v. Munson, supra, p. 588. There is certainly nothing in the Allgeyer case nor any other decision of the United States Supreme Court called to our attention, which requires the courts of this State to enforce a contract made contrary to its laws. The policy contract forming the basis of this suit may be valid and enforceable in the State of Maryland. The defendant Pakradooni may be protected by the Allgeyer decision from any prosecution for having entered into it. But this Commonwealth will not lend the use of its courts and process to carry into effect a contract which its lawmaking body had forbidden; Thorne v. Travelers' Ins. Co.,
The assignments of error are overruled and the judgment is affirmed. *538