54 Ga. App. 832 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1936
1. Where a fire-insurance policy contains a
clause that unless the ownership of the property insured is sole and unconditional the policy shall be void, and at the time of its issuance there is outstanding a valid and effective bill of sale to secure debt, executed by the insured, conveying the property covered by the policy of insurance, the policy is void, and the insured can not recover thereon. Peoples Credit Clothing Co. v. Old Colony Ins. Co., 47 Ga. App. 819 (171 S. E. 587). If, however, tbe agent who solicited and wrote the policy of fire-insurance containing such a sole-ownership clause had actual knowledge, when he wrote the policy, of the existence of the bill of sale to secure debt, transferring the title of the insured to another, generally the knowledge of the agent will be imputed to the principal, so as to preclude a voiding of the policy by the violation of the clause. See Interstate Life & Accident Co. v. Bess, 35 Ga. App. 723 (2), 724 (134 S. E. 804); National Fire Ins. Co. v. Thompson, 51 Ga. App. 625 (181 S. E. 101), and cit. But where, as in the instant case, the ownership condition of the policy was violated by the execution of a bill of sale to secure debt (if valid and effective), by the insured corporation through its president, signing both for the corporation and for himself individually, there would be no notice to the insurer as principal that the corporation had thus transferred title to the insured goods, so as to avoid a forfeiture of the policy, where the statement to the agent by the person who had executed the bill of sale was merely: “At the time when I first told him about the bill of sale, I told him it was my personal obligation, but I did put the Peoples Credit Clothing Company’s name on it, with a clause stating that it did not involve the Peoples Credit Clothing Company." If the bill of sale in question was effective to transfer title to the insured stock of goods out of the corporation, this positive statement that the agent was notified that the instrument represented merely the individuctl’s “personal obligation," and contained a clause that it “did not involve” the insured corporation, was ineffective to convey actual notice to the agent or the insurer that the corporation had transferred its title to the property, since the statement expressly negatived such fact.
“A mortgage may embrace all property in possession, or to which the mortgagor has the right of possession at the time.” Subject only to the statutory exceptions, it has long been the gen
There is no merit in the other exceptions, most of which have been settled adversely to the plaintiff by the rulings in Peoples Credit Clothing Co. v. Old Colony Ins. Co., supra, where, although the suit was against another insurer, the same loss was involved, and there was substantially similar evidence on the questions there raised. However, it does not appear that the ground of reversal in the instant ease was adjudicated by that decision.
Judgment reversed.