Court Opinion

ID: 9826243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 15:40:18.757126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:58.458151
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Woods.
1 I concur in the .result. The case stands entirely apart from the case of Jones v. Enoree Power Company, infra 263. There the contract was that the single issue of the amount of the damages arising from back water, caused by the raising of a dam, should be decided by a board of impartial arbitrators as a condition precedent tO' the right of action; and by the consensus of judicial authority such a contract is valid. Here the contract is that the guarantee company, one of the parties to the contract, should be the judge, not of a particular fact, but of the liability of the other party, and that its determination as to his liability should be conclusive. Such a contract is against public policy and invalid, because it is an attempt to substitute for the tribunals established by law a contract tribunal to determine, not some particular, antici*290pated issue of fact, but the issue of ultimate liability dependent on all the facts and the law. The authorities holding such an attempt futile are cited in Jones v. Enoree Power Company.
Even if this contract so- limited the matter to be decided by the plaintiff that it would not be invalid as an effort to oust the Courts of jurisdiction, yet it is an attempt to make one of the parties the final judge in his own case, of a matter of ordinary business accounting as distinguished from matters of personal fancy, taste, convenience, or preference. At the most such a stipulation cannot be effective further than to make the conclusion of the party in whose favor it is made prima facie evidence of the fact of default. Thompson v. Fidelity etc. Co., 63 S. C. 290, 41 S. E. 464; Fidelity etc. Co. v. Eichhoff, 63 Minn. 170, 65 N. W. 351, 56 Am. St. 464, 30 L. R. A. 586.
Mr. Justice Hydkick concurs.
2 Petition for rehearing dismissed August 12, 1912.