Court Opinion

ID: 9828619
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:33:57.867742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:51.101873
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The record shows that on the 30th day of August, 1926, which was one day after the house had been destroyed by fire, appellant’s local agents, C; R. Davis & Son, at Weatherford, issued a policy of insurance on the house for the sum of $1,500. The record further shows that the agents then wrote a letter to T. W. Bife, at Dallas, notifying him of the issuance of the policy, but Fife refused to accept insurance in that sum, claiming that it should have been for a greater sum. The evidence further shows that when the $1,500 policy was issued by the agents, and, when Fife received a letter from them notifying him of that fact, neither the agents or Fife knew that the house had already been destroyed on August 29th.
In appellant’s motion for rehearing; attention is called to the issuance of the $1,500 policy and to the letter addressed to Fife by the agents informing him of that fact; also to the letters written by the agents to Fife inquiring whether or not he desired further insurance after the expiration of the former policy on August 22, 1926. After reciting those and other facts the following is said in the motion for rehearing;
*215“Under these circumstances and in view of the correspondence between the parties,' it is submitted that the utmost liability of the company to the plaintiff is fixed by the policy which was actually issued and not the alleged oral contract of insurance.” ,
In the first place, “it is an elemental principle of law that the property insured must be in existence at the time when the risk attaches, and if at that time, although without the knowledge of either party, the property is not in existence, there is no valid insurance.” 26 O. J. 40.
In the second place, appellant did not in its pleadings allege the issuance by it of a valid insurance policy for the sum of $1,500 and admit liability thereon; and on the trial of the case appellant introduced correspondence from its agents to Fife, in which it was expressly stated that the $1,500 policy was not issued until after the fire, and that, therefore, Fife had no collectible insurance on the house at all.
In the third place, Fife did not in any of his pleadings seek, in the alternative, a recovery on the $1,500 policy in the event he was not entitled to recover on the alleged ofal contract of insurance; his whole ease being based upon the alleged oral contract of insurance in the sum of $2,000.
Other grounds stressed in 'the motion for rehearing consist of formal presentations of the same grounds urged upon original hearing for a reversal of the judgment, and we adhere to our conclusions thereon, already expressed in opinion on original hearing.
Accordingly, the motion for rehearing is overruled.