157 Ga. 360 | Ga. | 1924
The Court of Appeals propounds the following question: “Where a policy of fire insurance, taken out by the tenant and lessee of a building, insures the building for a certain sum, and a stock of goods in the building for another certain sum, the consideration of the policy being a premium payable in a gross sum, and where the policy of insurance contains a clause making any loss or damage to the building payable to a named third person (the owner of the building), “as his interest may appear,” and where both the building and the stock of goods were subsequently damaged by fire, and the insured brings suit in his own name to recover both the damage to the stock of goods and the damage to the building, is the petition subject to general demurrer for the reason that it fails to set forth that the recovery of the damage to the building is sought for the use and benefit of the person named in the aforesaid loss-payable clause?” The Civil Code (1910), § 2472, provides in part: “To sustain any contract of insurance it must appear that the assured has some interest in the property or event insured, and such as he represented himself to have. A slight or contingent interest is sufficient, whether legal or equitable, and several having different interests may unite in procuring one policy.” This rule, provided by statute in Georgia, is well-nigh universal in this country, so far as we are able to ascertain. “It is enough if he [the assured] holds such a relation to the property that its destruction by the peril insured against involves pecuniary loss to him.” Home Insurance Co. v. Mendenhall, 164 Ill. 458, 467 (45 N. E. 1078). “The test of insurable interest in property is whether insured has such a right, title, or interest therein, or relation thereto, that he will be benefited by its preservation and continued existence or suffer a direct pecuniary loss from its destruction or injury by the peril insured against.” 32 C. J. 1111. “A lessee has an insurable interest in the leased property.”- Id.;