80 Miss. 667 | Miss. | 1902
delivered the opinion of the court.
The act under construction is as follows:
“An act to amend section 1 of chapter 63 of the laws of 1894, known as the ‘Valued Policy Law,’ and to reduce the cost of fire insurance, and to prevent insurance trusts and combines, and to fix the amount of taxes to be paid by fire insurance companies.
“Section 1. Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of Mississippi, that section 1 of chapter 63 of the laws of 1894, be so amended as to read as follows: In suits brought upon policies of insurance against loss by fire, hereafter issued or renewed, the. insurer shall not be permitted to deny that the property insured was worth, at the time of issuing the policy, the full value upon which the insurance was calculated. And in case the policy contains a three-quarter valuation clause, the insurer shall not deny that the amount of the policy was but three-fourths the valuation at the date of its issuance, and a similar rule shall apply, it matters not what proportion the amount of insurance bears to valuation, according to the terms of the policy. In case of total loss of the property insured, the measure of damages shall be the amount for which the property was insured. In case of partial loss, or damage by
The scheme of this statute, it seems to us, after the most careful consideration, is this: To provide that in case of total loss of property, real or personal, except personal property constantly changing in specifics and quantity, the company shall pay the amount named in the policy, the amount on which, as a basis, the premium has been calculated and received, and that in case of partial loss of real or personal property, except personal property constantly changing in specifics and quantity, the company shall pay the amount of actual damage, not to exceed the amount of the policy; again making the company possibly liable, according to the extent of the damage, on the basis of the amount on which it has received premiums. It could not be known in advance how great or small the-damage would be in case of a partial loss, and hence no sum could be named as the measure of a partial loss; and consequently, since there was no sum the parties could agree on as the measure of the partial loss, there could be no contract to pay any specific sum, but the amount to be paid must be measured by the actual damage — not to exceed, in the case of any company, the amount named in the policy. The insured might recover up to the amount on the basis of which the premiums had been calculated, but could never recover from different companies two or three times the value of the property destroyed, as in case of total loss, since there could be, in the nature .of things, no fixation of the amount of partial loss, as there easily could be of the amount of a total loss^ And lastly, the statute provided
Affirmed.