Hillier v. Allegheny County Mutual Insurance
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Error to the District Court of Allegheny county. Sept. 15. In the court below, the action was debt, brought by the Allegheny County Mutual Insurance Company, on the premium note of Thomas A. Hillier, a member of the said company. The defendant claimed to be a sufferer by the fire, in the city of Pittsburgh, of the 10th of April, 1845, and pleaded non-assumpsit, payment with leave, &c., and set off.
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Error to the District Court of Allegheny county. Sept. 15. In the court below, the action was debt, brought by the Allegheny County Mutual Insurance Company, on the premium note of Thomas A. Hillier, a member of the said company. The defendant claimed to be a sufferer by the fire, in the city of Pittsburgh, of the 10th of April, 1845, and pleaded non-assumpsit, payment with leave, &c., and set off. On the trial in the court below, after the evidence had been closed, the parties agreed that the evidence be considered as a case stated, in the nature of a special verdict, for the opinion of the…
1Opinion of the CourtGibson, C. J.
insurers are answerable for direct and immediate, not for consequential and remote, losses from a peril insured against. When that is fire, the instrument of destruction must be fire. On no other principle than that the character of the loss is determinable by the proximate cause of it, could the insurers have been held liable for the loss of the Dutch ship mentioned in Marshall on Insurance, p. 421, as having been burnt by the Spaniards at Majorca in consequence of an apprehension that the crew were infected with the plague. An inversion of the rule would have made them liable only in case…
2Cited by7 opinions
- Standard Printing & Publishing Co. v. BothwellCourt of Appeals of Maryland · 1923
- Taggart, Ins. Com. v. GrahamSuperior Court of Pennsylvania · 1932
- Cleland Simpson Co. v. Firemen's Insurance, Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Lackawanna County1957
- Watson v. American Colony Ins. Co. of N.Y.Supreme Court of South Carolina · 1936
- Beatty v. Netherlands InsuranceSuperior Court of Pennsylvania · 1935
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