21 F. Cas. 1051 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut | 1869
This is a suit on a policy of insurance agáinst fire issued to William R. Luckett, of Mississippi, dated August 3d, 1860, upon a building situated at the Artesian Springs, Madison County, in that state. It is conceded that a total loss occurred on the 5th of January, 1861, and . during the life of the policy, that the assured subsequently died, and that the defendants are liable to his administrator in this suit unless the right to recover is barred by lapse of time.
Among the conditions attached to, and making part of, the policy, is the following
' “ It is furthermore expressly provided, that no suit or action of any kind against said company, for the recovery of any claim upon or by virtue of this policy, shall be sustainable in any court of law or chancery, unless such suit or action shall be commenced within the term of twelve months next after any loss or damage shall occur; and in case, any such suit or action shall be commenced against said company after the expiration of twelve months next after such loss or damage shall have occurred, the lapse of timé shall be taken and deemed conclusive evidence against the validity of the claim thereby so attempted to-be enforced.” .
The present suit was commenced on the 31st of October, 1866, and the defendants have pleaded in bar the condition of the policy above cited. To this plea the plaintiff has filed his replication, setting up the following matters by way of answer thereto:
First.—That though the loss happened on the 5th of January, 1861, yet the defendants by the terms of the policy were to have sixty days after notice and proofs of loss within which to make payment, and that the assured, though then in life, could bring no action on the policy till after the lapse of the sixty days.'
. Second.—That the policy was delivered and the contract therein made and to be performed in the state- of Mississippi, where the assured continued to reside until his death, and where liis administrator has since resided; and that the policy was made and delivered under and with express reference to a certain statute of said state whereby it was the duty of the
Third.—That the assured, down to the time of his death, was a resident and citizen of the state of Mississippi, and that the plaintiff, during his whole life, has been aud still is a resident and citizen of the same state ; that from April 15th, 1861', to April 2d, 1866, a state of war between the so-called Confederate States, including the state of Mississippi, and the United States, existed, whereby all right of the assured during his life, and of his administrator since his death, to maintain any action against the defendants, was by law suspended during all that time.
This replication the defendants have traversed.
By stipulation this case was tried to the court instead of the jury. Upon the proofs, and the admissions of the parties made in open court, I find the following facts :
First.—That the assured, from the date of the policy till his death, April 6th, 1865, was a citizen of and actually resided in the state of Mississippi; and that the plaintiff is his administrator, duly appointed and qualified in said state, and has during all his life been a citizen of, and actual resident therein.
Second.—That the plaintiff has taken out ancillary letters of administration in the state of Connecticut.
Third.—That the loss against which the policy provided occurred on the 5th of January, 1861, and has never been paid.
Fourth.—That the notice and proofs of loss required by the policy were duly furnished the defendants, and that the sixty days thereafter expired April ,11th, 1861.
I will now proceed to state the legal conclusions to which I have arrived on the foregoing state of facts.
I pass the question whether the year in which the plaintiff or his intestate was hound by the condition in the policy to commence suit or be 'barred a recovery, commenced to' run upon the lapse of sixty days after the proofs of loss were furnished, as the result to which I have arrived renders it immaterial.
The fact alleged in the replication and found by the court, that the defendants revoked, or rather attempted to revoke, the power of their agent in Mississippi to accept service, may also be dismissed. If I should assume, as the plaintiff claims, that the law of Mississippi on the subject controls the rights of the parties under the contract on this point, it'would not support the inference which the plaintiff seeks to' draw. There is no allegation that the agent personally left the state. The presumption therefore is that he remained there. If the’ law of Mississippi is binding on the defendants, requiring’ them to continue an agent in that state empowered to accept service, or upon whom service might be made, during the life' of this policy, and until the loss under it is paid, then the agent in question must be deemed to possess that' power. The defendants conferred it upon him, .and he continued to represent them in that capacity till January 23d, 1861, as is conceded on all hands. But it is found that they revoked this power of their agent on the last-named date, so far as they could. Yet if the plaintiff’s claim, that the statute of
■ Then as to the withdrawal of their funds by the defendants. Whatever embarrassments this would have caused the plaintiff or his intestate, it could not prevent or delay him from bringing his suit, and thus complying with the condition. He could have merged his claim in a judgment, and then pursued satisfaction in any other forum where property could be found, unembarrassed by this twelve months’ restriction. I have thus adverted but briefly to these points as they were not pressed on the argument.
But a question of much more magnitude and difficulty remains to be considered. The replication sets up the late rebellion, and alleges that a state of war existed between the organization known as the Confederate States, including the state of Mississippi, and the United States, from the 15th of April, 1861, to the 2d of April, 1866, whereby it is claimed that this contract and all right to sue upon it was, during all that time, suspended. There is no allegation that the courts of Mississippi, or the national . courts in that state, were closed for any specific length of time, nor that the plaintiff, or his intestate, labored under any personal disability arising out of his actual participation in the war, nor that he was under the control of any vis major, beyond what the law implies from the state of war. The whole question, therefore, turns on the legal consequences of the war in their operation
It is, of course, conceded that a state of war, recognized as such by and between the belligerent parties, suspends all contracts in existence between the citizens of the respective belligerents at the time the war commences. The authorities are uniform on this subject. The general rule is well stated by Mr. Justice Nelson in The Prize Cases, 2 Black’s Rep., 687. “ The legal consequences resulting from a state of war between two countries at this day are well understood, and will be found described in every approved work on the subject of international law. The people of the two countries become immediately the enemies of each other,—all intercourse, commercial or otherwise, between them unlawful,—all contracts existing at the commencement of the war suspended, and all made during its existence utterly void.” This doctrine has been repeatedly recognized and applied to our late civil war by the courts of this country, both state and national. Hanger v. Abbott, 5 Wall., 532; Tucker v. Watson, 15 Am. Law Reg., 22; Jackson Ins. Co. v. Stewart, id., 732; Conn. Mat. Life Ins. Co. v. Hall, 16 id., 606.
It is equally well settled that, upon the termination of the war, obligations contracted before its commencement between the respective subjects, though the remedy for their recovery is suspended during the war, are revived. Lawrence’s Wheaton, 877, and the cases above cited. In Hanger v. Abbott, and Jackson Ins. Co. v. Stewart, this doctrine was applied to the statutes of limitation. In the former case Mr. Justice Clifford, speaking for the court, says: “ When a debt has not been confiscated, the rule undoubtedly is that the right to sue revives on the restoration of peace, and Mr. Chitty says that with the return of peace we return to the creditor the right and the remedy. .Unless we return the remedy with the right, the pretense of restoring the latter is a mockery, as the power to exercise it with effect is gone by lapse of time during which both the right and the remedy were suspended.”
Applying these doctrines to the present case, it follows that the war, in which the people of Mississippi on one side, and
Now, it must be remembered, that though this was a war between belligerents, attended while it continued by those legal consequences which public law always attaches to all legitimate warfare, yet it was a civil war in which the revolted party was defeated, and its organization as a de facto government under the name of the Confederate States of America, politically annihilated. No treaty of peace in the ordinary sense of that term could be negotiated, as but one of the parties which had waged the war was in existence as a treaty-making power at its close. Therefore no such treaty has drawn the line where the war ended, and suspended contracts revived. We must therefore look to the acts of the only surviving party to ascertain when those disabilities, legally imposed by the state of war, ceased. It is hardly necessary for me to say that the principle here stated lends no support to the doctrine put forth in some quarters, and which that distinguished jurist, Mr. Justice Sprague, characterized as a “grave and dangerous error,”—that the suppression of the rebellion conferred upon the United States the rights of conquest,—the right to treat the states included in the rebellion as foreign territory acquired by arms, and permanently divest them and their inhabitants of all political privileges. 2 Sprague’s Decisions, 147. That notion has nothing to do with the' point now under consideration. The United States, in suppressing the rebellion, destroyed the political organization known as the Confederate States, and not the individual states as political communities. But though the states remained after the contest ended, the belligerent power known as the Confederate States which had represented them in the war, disappeared at its close. Neither of the states which remained had the power, or attempted, to negotiate a treaty of peace with the United States. In determining, therefore, when the rights suspended by the war revived, we must look
■ It is a settled rule with the courts, of the United States, in ascertaining whether or not war exists, to look to the action of those departments of the government to which that subject is confided by the constitution. Courts never inquire, when investigating questions of this character, when active hostilities ceased. The termination of war, and the establishment of the relations of peace, are political acts, to be performed exclusively by the departments of the government to which political powers and duties are entrusted. The action of these departments, when within the authority conferred by the constitution, is conclusive and binding on the. courts as well as citizens. When war has existed between the .United States and a foreign country, its termination is easily ascertained by a reference to the treaty of peace which follows it, and which is consummated by the President acting by and with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate. As no such treaty did, or could, mark the close of this civil war, we must look to the action of the President, or Congress, or both, and from that action ascertain when the war ended, and when the legal consequences which flowed from it ceased to act in any given case.
I have already shown that by the rules of public .law universally recognized among civilized nations, as well as by the decisions of our own courts, the existence of this war suspended all contracts between the citizens of the respective belligerents, entered into before it commenced. It rendered, for the time being, all commercial intercourse between the citizens of the two sections unlawful, and converted them into enemies. But in addition to this, Congress passed an act July 13th, 1861, authorizing the President in certain cases by proclamation to declare the inhabitants of a state in insurrection against the United States, whereupon all commercial intercourse by and between the same and the citizens thereof and the citizens of the rest of the United States should become unlawful. In pursuance of this statute the President,
May 29th, 1865, the President proclaimed amnesty and pardon to all persons in the late revolted states, except certain specified classes, with restoration of all rights of property except slaves, and in cases where legal proceedings had been commenced for the confiscation of property of persons engaged in rebellion, on condition that they should take and subscribe a certain oath.
On the same day he issued a proclamation appointing a Provisional Governor for North Carolina, and prescribing his duty and authority. ‘
June 13th, 1865, he issued a similar proclamation relating to Mississippi.
On the same day he issued a proclamation appointing a Provisional Governor over Tennessee, and declaring, among other things, “ that all restrictions upon internal, domestic, and coastwise intercourse and trade, and upon the removal of the products of states heretofore declared in insurrection,
April 2d, 1866, the President issued a proclamation formally declaring the insurrection that had existed in certain states, including Mississippi, at an end, and to be thenceforth so regarded.
It should be remarked that there was no executive declaration that the insurrection was ended, before that of April 2d, 1866, in any state except Tennessee. On the 13th of June, 1865, he did, in the proclamation already cited, declare it terminated in the last-named state. In a proclamation of the same date relating to Mississippi, and in the one of May 29th, 1865, relating to North Carolina, he spoke of the _ armed forces of the rebellion as having been “ almost entirely overcome.”
We must now inquire into the legal character of the proclamations of the President restoring commercial intercourse to and with the states which had been engaged in the rebellion, and the rest of the United States. And, first, as to his authority to issue such proclamations. I think there can be no doubt on that point. The Supreme Court of the United States recognized the power of the. President to, in effect,’ declare the inhabitants of the disaffected states in a state of insurrection as early as April 19th, 1861, when he set on foot the blockade of certain ports, including those in Mississippi. The Prize Cases, 2 Black’s Rep., 670. In the opinion in these cases Mr. Justice Grier, speaking for a majority of the court, says : “ Whether the President in fulfilling his duties as Commander-in-Chief, in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance, and a civil war of such alarming proportions, as will compel him to accord 'to them the character of belligerents, is a question to be decided
But whether this is the true doctrine or not, it must be remembered that the act of Congress of July 13th, 1861, authorized the President to declare certain states in insurrection, whereupon all commercial intercourse was to become unlawful. On the 16th of August following he issued such a proclamation. Prom that time forward the interdiction of commercial intercourse had the double sanction of public law and a special act of Congress operating from the date of the pfoclamation. Now, it may be said with some force, that inasmuch as commercial intercourse became unlawful under
We are next to consider what was the legal effect of that proclamation. Its language has already been cited. Beyond all question it embraces all contracts thereafter to be made, and delivers them from the invalidating effect of public law, as well as from the effect of the statute of July 13th, 1861, and the proclamation made in pursuance thereof, August 16th, following. Such contracts being valid, the right to enforce them in the courts necessarily followed. A citizen of one section could sue a citizen of the other on such a contract without having his suit defeated on the ground that it was invalid either by public or statute law,- or abated under the plea of alien enemy. Both the right and the remedy on such a contract, were complete.
The question then arises, in what condition were the numerous contracts existing when the war commenced, left by the proclamation of June 13th, 1865 ? Were they still suspended, and the parties without any right to enforce them ? Undoubtedly unpaid debts contracted before the war could have been lawfully paid by citizens of one section to those of the other at any time after the date of this proclamation. This would he exercising one of the privileges of “ domestic intercourse,” restored in express terms by that proclamation^
It follows from these principles that the contract upon which this suit is founded, though suspended during the war, while intercourse between the citizens of the belligerent sections was unlawful, revived on the 13th of June, 1865, and from that date was in Ml force. Prom that time there has been no legal obstacle to its enforcement. Whether Mississippi was without civil tribunals during any portion of the time since the contract revived, is neither averred in the replication nor was it proved on the trial. This court cannot take judicial knowledge of that point. But it is immaterial. The plaintiff could have resorted to the state tribunals of Connecticut, or to this court, at any time since his appointment as administrator. Not having brought his suit within the time limited by the policy, exclusive of the whole period of disability, the plea in bar is a conclusive answer to his right to recover. Judgment must, therefore, be entered for the defendants.