Court Opinion

ID: 9447443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:35:26.258345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:03.049393
License: Public Domain

*491HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
While I concur in the opinion and the result in No. 18017, the admiralty case, I dissent from both opinion and result in No. 18018,
The policy issued by Reliance was a yacht policy, containing a private pleasure warranty as follows:
“Warranted by the Assured that the vessel shall be used solely for private pleasure purposes and shall not be hired or chartered unless approved by the Assurers, and permission endorsed hereon.”
The evidence was undisputed, indeed it was admitted, that this express warranty was deliberately breached by the insured by chartering the yacht for charter hire of $125.00 per day. The charterer, a young lady, and two friends, with a captain employed for the charter, took the vessel to the Bahama Islands, where the vessel was run aground near Cat Cay. The result of the decision of the court is, in my opinion, to make the theory of es-toppel operate to extend the coverage to a risk not only not provided for in, but prohibited by, the policy of insurance. In my view, there is no basis whatever in the record for the result reached in this case.
I was a member of the court which decided Lineas, etc. v. Travelers, 5 Cir., 257 F.2d 150, cited by the court here as authority for its conclusion, and I must vigorously dissent from the idea that that case deals with a similar situation to that existing here or furnishes any authority for the result reached here. What and all that is involved in this case is that an express warranty was flagrantly breached, and for the loss to the insured, against which it did not contract, the insurer is being made to pay. Convinced as I am that the opinion, by supporting the theory of estoppel in this case, runs a good principal into the ground, I Dissent.