Insurance Company v. Lyman/Opinion of the Court

by Samuel Freeman Miller

United States Supreme Court

82 U.S. 664

Insurance Company  v.  Lyman

Undoubtedly a valid verbal contract for insurance may be made, and when it is relied on, and is unembarrassed by any written contract for the same insurance, it can be proved and become the foundation of a recovery as in all other cases where contracts may be made either by parol or in writing. But it is also true that when there is a written contract of insurance it must have the same effect as the adopted mode of expressing what the contract is, that it has in other classes of contract, and must have the same effect in excluding parol testimony in its application to it, that other written instruments have.

Counsel for the defendants in error here, relies on two propositions, namely, that the policy, though executed January 5th, is really but the expression of a verbal contract, made the 31st day of December previous, and that the loss of the vessel between those two dates does not invalidate the contract, though known to the insured and kept secret from the insurers; and secondly, that they can abandon the written contract altogether and recover on the parol contract.

We do not think that either of these propositions is sound.

Whatever may have been the precise facts concerning the negotiations for a renewal of the insurance previous to the execution of the policy, they evidently had reference to a written contract, to be made by the company.

When the company came to make this instrument, they were entitled to the information which the plaintiffs had of the loss of the vessel. If then they had made the policy, it would have bound them, and no question would have been raised of the validity of the instrument or of fraud practiced by the insured.

On the other hand, if they had refused to make a policy, no injury would have been done to the plaintiffs, and they would then have stood on their parol contract if they had one, and did not need a policy procured by fraudulent concealment of a material fact at the time it was executed and the premium paid.

To permit the plaintiffs, therefore, to prove by parol that the contract of insurance was actually made before the loss occurred, though executed and delivered and paid for afterward, is to contradict and vary the terms of the policy in a matter material to the contract, which we understand to be opposed to the rule on that subject in the law of Louisiana as well as at the common law.

We think it equally clear, that the terms of the contract having been reduced to writing, signed by one party and accepted by the other at the time the premium of insurance was paid, neither party can abandon that instrument, as of no value in ascertaining what the contract was, and resort to the verbal negotiations which were preliminary to its execution, for that purpose. The doctrine is too well settled that all previous negotiations and verbal statements are merged and excluded when the parties assent to a written instrument as expressing the agreement. And it is hardly necessary to say, that the party who has destroyed the validity of that contract by his own fraud, cannot for that reason treat it as if it had never been made, and recover on the verbal statements made before its execution.

We may add that, as the only testimony offered to prove this parol contract, was the deposition of a single witness, made part of the bill of exceptions, we do not see in that deposition sufficient evidence of a completed contract, of an agreement assented to by both parties at any one time, to be submitted to a jury, even if the written contract had never been executed.

A NEW TRIAL.

Notes