Court Opinion

ID: 9580910
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:10:11.943601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:35.938378
License: Public Domain

Ebbrhardt, Judge,
dissenting.
It seems to me that the majority have grounded their holding upon the language defining the word “messenger” in the policy, and not upon the insuring agreement itself.
The applicable insuring agreement, covering losses outside the insured’s premises, provides that the insurer will “pay for loss of money and securities by the actual destruction, disappearance or wrongful abstraction thereof outside the premises while being conveyed by a messenger or any armored motor vehicle company, or by theft while within the living quarters in the home of any messenger.”
True enough, the word messenger is defined to mean “the insured, a partner therein or an officer thereof, or any employee thereof who is in the regular service of and duly authorized by the insured to have the care and custody of the insured property outside the premises.” This simply describes and delimits the individuals who may serve as messengers within the coverage. As to employees, it covers only those who are in regular service *436and, additionally, have been duly authorized to have care and custody of the money or securities. This does not impose coverage in situations where the employee, though regularly employed and authorized to have care and custody of money and securities, may have lost it at a time or under circumstances not within the insuring clause. The loss must have occurred while the money or securities were being conveyed by him.
It is conceded here that the employee involved was regularly employed and that he was duly authorized to have the care and custody of money and securities of the insured. The only provisions of the contract which require construction, if they do, are the phrases “care and custody,” and “while being conveyed.”
We have heretofore researched the same problem in the case of Cleveland Avenue Liquor Store v. Home Ins. Co., 115 Ga. App. 864 (156 SE2d 202), where we concluded that the protective care and custody of money contemplated by the contract is actual personal possession by the messenger. Likewise, “while being conveyed” has uniformly been held by courts of other jurisdictions dealing with the matter to require personal possession of the messenger. That this is a reasonable and proper conclusion as to the meaning of the terms is borne out by the fact that protection is extended to money and securities “while being conveyed” by the insured’s messenger or by “any armored motor vehicle company.” The care and custody of the messenger, described along with that of an armored motor vehicle company, under the rule of ejusdem generis, or under the maxim noscitur a sociis, imports that the care or custody be of like character—not the same, of course, but protective in nature. It has generally been considered that this can appear only where the care or custody of the messenger has been that of personal possession. Cf. Great American Indem. Co. v. Southern Feed Stores, 51 Ga. App. 591 (181 SE 115). We came to the same conclusion in the Cleveland Avenue Liquor Store case and I can see no reason to do otherwise here.
The provisions of the contracts in that case and in this are the same, or substantially so. The facts have some similarity and, as Judge Hall points out, some differences. However, when the messenger parked the car on the lot of a sandwich shop, left *437the money in it—though the car may have been locked—and went inside to buy a sandwich, as I see it, he was not then “conveying” the money. It was simply stored and locked.
That there is a difference in the treatment to be accorded money or securities and other types of property is a matter too generally and commonly known to admit of cavil. Money in the hands of a thief is generally not identifiable and is immediately negotiable.
The cases cited by Judge Deen do not require a different result. In Kamar Fur. Corp. v. Century Ins. Co., 142 N. Y. S. 2d 904, a clothing salesman left the racks of samples in his locked hotel room while he went for lunch and the room was burglarized. He could not have been expected to carry the racks of clothing with him. These are different in nature from money. In American Indem. Co. v. Swartz, 250 F2d 532, a recovery was held authorized where the messenger was held up while in the car and the money, lying beside her on the seat, was taken, it having been “under the constant observation of the authorized messenger and within her reach” at all times after she received it. The court dealt with an on-the-premises robbery (not involved here) in Fox West Coast Theaters v. Union Ind. Co., 167 Wash. 319 (9 P2d 78) and J. J. Newberry Co. v. Continental Cas. Co., 229 Cal. App. 2d 728 (40 Cal. Rptr. 509). In Birgbauer v. Aetna Cas. & Surety Co., 251 Mich. 614 (232 NW 403) the facts are somewhat more similar to those of the case here. A diamond salesman stopped pursuant to instructions to pick up a diamond gauge. He left a supply of uncut diamonds in a locked brief case, in his locked car, and stepped into the front of the place, 15 feet from the car, when he was held up and forced to surrender the keys to the car and the brief case. But he had not left these out of his sight and gone on a personal mission.