Insurance Company v. McCain/Opinion of the Court

by Stephen Johnson Field

United States Supreme Court

96 U.S. 84

Insurance Company  v.  McCain

The law embraced by the instructions to the jury is clearly and correctly stated. No company can be allowed to hold out another as its agent, and then disavow responsibility for his acts. After it has appointed an agent in a particular business, parties dealing with him in that business have a right to rely upon the continuance of his authority, until in some way informed of its revocation. The authorities to this effect are numerous, and will be found cited in the treatises of Paley and Story on Agency.

The law is equally plain, that special instructions limiting the authority of a general agent, whose powers would otherwise be coextensive with the business intrusted to him, must be communicated to the party with whom he deals, or the principal will be bound to the same extent as though such special instructions were not given. Were the law otherwise, the door would be open to the commission of gross frauds. Good faith requires that the principal should be held by the acts of one whom he has publicly clothed with apparent authority to bind him. Story, Agency, sects. 126, 127, and cases there cited.

The law on the silence of the company, after receiving the statement of the agent that the premium had been paid, is also free from doubt. Silence then was equivalent to an adoption of the act of the agent, and closed the mouth of the company ever afterwards. It does not appear that the company ever objected to the payment of the premium to him until after the death of the insured. It was then too late. As pertinently said by counsel, the company cannot be permitted to occupy the vantage ground of retaining the premium if the party continued in life, and repudiating it if he died.

Judgment affirmed.

Notes