Case ID: so2d_284/html/0214-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      PER CURIAM. ERVIN, Justice", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

TOPP IMPORT & EXPORT, INC., Petitioner, v. The HOME INSURANCE COMPANY, Respondent.
    No. 43904.
    Supreme Court of Florida.
    Oct. 11, 1973.
   PER CURIAM.

This cause having heretofore been submitted to the Court on Petition for Writ of Certiorari, jurisdictional briefs and portions of the record deemed necessary to reflect jurisdiction under Florida Appellate Rule 4.5c(6), 32 F.S.A., and it appearing to the Court that it is without jurisdiction, it is ordered that the Petition for Writ of Certiorari be and the same is hereby denied.

ROBERTS, Acting C. J., and ADKINS, BOYD and McCAIN, JJ., concur.

ERVIN, J., dissents with opinion.

ERVIN, Justice

(dissenting) :

The District Court, Fla.App., 276 So.2d 221, construed the subject insurance policy against the insured holding that the coverage did not insure against loss to import shipments. The shipments in question had been brought by vessel into the United States at Seattle, Washington in foreign commerce. There they were assembled and became cargo for interstate “piggyback” railroad shipment to New Jersey. True they had not lost their identity as imports for tax purposes, but in the common sense meaning of the insurance policy they were piggy-back cargo shipments moving in interstate commerce at the time the insured suffered their loss by physical damage and theft. The policy excluded “imports” in the sense of cargo being transported in vessels in foreign commerce, but when the “imports” were being transported “piggy-back” they came within the class of any internal shipment of that kind within the intendment of the policy. Any loss that occurred to the insured’s goods while in “piggy-back” transportation was clearly contemplated to fall within the policy’s coverage. Their character as “imports” had changed to that of goods in “piggyback” transport. In any event the policy’s ambiguous stance in the respects noted should have been judicially resolved in in-, sured’s favor.