Court Opinion

ID: 9794976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:15:20.948608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:22:46.269607
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, J., Dissenting.
I cannot agree that the Insurance Code allows the commissioner, immediately upon his appointment as conservator of a company having its principal office in San Francisco, to remove that office to Los Angeles. Undoubtedly the purpose of section 1040 is to facilitate the work of the commissioner. But as he maintains an office in San Francisco, removal of the insurance company’s office to Los Angeles appears to be a most drastic procedure which should not be approved in the absence of express statutory authority therefor.
*849By other provisions of the Insurance Code, a company may be summarily seized by the commissioner under an ex- parte order of the superior court based upon his verified application therefor. Such an order continues in force until, after a full hearing, it appears to the court that the ground for it does not exist or has been removed. (See. 1012.) In other words, the company seized may challenge the grounds asserted by the commissioner as justifying his action, and, in the meantime, he is administering its affairs under the condition that he must eventually establish by judicial decree, after hearing, his right so to do.
During this time, particularly, his work should be accompanied with a minimum of inconvenience to the company whose assets he is conserving. In organizations of any size there may be many thousands of policyholders and creditors. To allow him to summarily remove the company’s office from the city where it has been carrying on its business for many years, and where he has a large administrative staff, seems to me to impose hardships which the legislature has not sanctioned.
Until 1935, the Liquidation Act (Stats. 1919, p. 268) authorized the commissioner to remove the principal office of a company whose business he was administering “to the city and county of San Francisco.” When the Insurance Code was enacted, the legislature made a requirement that the commissioner shall maintain an office in Los Angeles and added to the provision authorizing removal the words “or to the city of Los Angeles.” To me, these changes indicate a legislative purpose to broaden his power of removal to include the new office at Los Angeles, but I cannot read into them an intention to authorize the removal of an insurance company’s office from San Francisco, where the commissioner also maintains an office, to Los Angeles.
For these reasons, I believe that the writs sought by the applicant should be denied.
Rehearing denied. Edmonds, J., voted for a rehearing.