by John Marshall Harlan

“ It may well be that an insurance company would be willing to insure property owned by a particular person of whose character and habits its agent had knowledge or information, but unwilling to insure the same property if owned by that person in connection with others. Prudence requires that a company, before insuring against fire, should be informed as to the actual ownership of the property proposed to be insured, and know who, in virtue of such ownership, will be entitled to its custody and to control it during the term of the policy. ”

“ One construction of the policy is that if either the building or the stock in trade should pass from the assured to another person, then the policy should cease as to all the property insured. But another construction, the one most favorable to the assured, which is not unreasonable, and which is not forbidden by the words used, is that, as the building and the stock in trade were separately insured, the policy should cease to be in force only as to the particular property insured that passed from the assured without notice to the company. ”

“ Clearly, this case is not of the class the judgment in which, if rendered in the supreme court of a territory of the United States, to use the words of the act of 1891, is reviewable in a circuit court of appeals under that act. It is not a patent, revenue, or criminal case, nor one in which the jurisdiction of the court below depended entirely upon the opposite parties to the controversy being aliens and citizens of the United States or citizens of different states. ”