Johnson v. Hanover Fire Insurance

137 P.2d 615, 59 Wyo. 120, 1943 Wyo. LEXIS 9
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedMay 25, 1943
Docket2248
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 137 P.2d 615 (Johnson v. Hanover Fire Insurance) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Johnson v. Hanover Fire Insurance, 137 P.2d 615, 59 Wyo. 120, 1943 Wyo. LEXIS 9 (Wyo. 1943).

Opinion

*127 Riner, Justice.

These proceedings by direct appeal were instituted to review a judgment of the District Court of Natrona County in an action based on a fire insurance policy wherein C. P. Johnson was plaintiff and the Hanover Fire Insurance Company was defendant. Subsequently, the parties hereto will be designated respectively, C. P. Johnson as the “plaintiff” or by his surname and the Hanover Fire Insurance Company as the “insurer” or the “defendant”.

The facts necessary to be considered in order to dispose of this litigation are substantially these: The plaintiff is engaged in the business of producing wool and has been so engaged continuously since about the year 1909. His 1937 crop of wool was clipped late in May or early in June of that year, and seventy-seven bags containing 30,807 pounds were stored in the basement room of a storage place known as the “Hawley Warehouse” in Casper, Wyoming. This basement was about 129 feet long, some 48 feet wide, and approximately 7 or 8 feet high and was used at the time the wool was stored therein for the storage also of 12 to 14 tons of straw in bales, 10 bags of a red colored vegetable compound known as “Mineral Mix” used as feed for stock and chickens, and 10 tons of salt. These bags of “Mineral Mix” each weighed about 100 pounds and the salt aforesaid was loose “sheep salt”. The baled straw mentioned above was located about 30 to 40 feet from where the wool was placed. The bags containing the wool were “stood on end”, were about 6V2 feet high and approximately 3 feet in diameter.

On the morning of September 24, 1937, this straw *128 was discovered to be on fire. The Casper Fire Department gave the matter prompt attention and two or three hose lines were used for a period of some 45 minutes intermittently throwing water on the burning straw. When the fire was finally extinguished, the water stood from 12 to 14 inches in depth on the basement floor of the warehouse, and in consequence saturated all the bags of wool to that height on each as they were standing on the floor. Some 12 or 15 bags of this wool had tumbled over and these were completely saturated with the water mixed with the salt and other material on the basement floor. This fire appears to have started in the early morning hours of the day, the alarm coming to the fire stations in Casper shortly after 6 A. M. The smoke in the basement was extremely dense for a number of hours and only the firemen with proper mask protection were able to work there.

The water was finally pumped out of the basement and the afternoon of the day of the fire a truck load of the wool had been removed to another warehouse room located across the street from the Hawley structure and known as the “Chopping Warehouse”. The following day the most of the wool had been thus removed and during the third morning after the fire all of it had been transferred to the dry storage room.

After the wool had been moved over to the Chopping Warehouse, it was taken out of the wet sacks and the fleeces were spread out on the floor so they could dry. Paper twine had been used to tie up the fleeces, and in some instances this was broken in handling. Where this occurred, the men doing this work did not undertake to retie them. The bags of wool which had fallen down into the water as mentioned above were so heavily saturated with it that it took five men to handle one of them. After the wool had been dried for some time, it was put back in new dry sacks and returned to the *129 Hawley Warehouse which was by that time quite dry. It seems to have taken about a week to resack the wool. The wool that had been water-soaked was nevertheless resacked though it was still damp. The wool at that time still possessed a very disagreeable odor, and this unpleasant smell persisted for a considerable period of time after the wool had been brought back to its original location. This wool, when first placed in sacks before the fire, had been separated and the bags marked so that the different kinds of wool could be identified. These classes of wool were: Yearling, Buck, Ewe, and Black Wool fleeces. This separation and marking was done in order to facilitate selling the product — some buyers of wool, it seems, would want one kind and others another. When the wool was resacked in the new bags after the fire, no effort was made to keep these several kinds of wool separate or to identify them. They were all mixed together in the new sacks. It also appears from the record before us that handling wool repeatedly, as was done after the fire and as described above, impairs its value when exhibited or sampled for sale.

Mr. Barley, the agent of the defendant, who had received the insurance premium due on the insurance policy herein involved on behalf of the insurer during the morning of the fire had conferred with Mr. Hawley, the warehouse owner, and directed the latter to move the wool, as was actually done, dry it, resack it, and return it to its original location. When this process was completed, the defendant paid Johnson the entire cost thereof and he repaid the warehouseman, Hawley, the amount of such payment being $231.

The owner of the wool, the plaintiff herein, did not learn of the fire for some two or three days after it occurred, being out of the city of Casper at the time on the range looking after his sheep. The first time he' saw the wool, it was scattered around on the floor of *130 the Chopping Warehouse and the men were engaged in drying and resacking it. He had nothing to do with the process of attempting to recondition the wool as described above.

It appears also from the record that wool raised in the vicinity of Casper, Wyoming is usually marketed in that city. After the fire and when the wool had all been returned to the Hawley Warehouse, Johnson made a number of efforts to sell his wool, but was unsuccessful although he received several offers therefor which he declined to take considering that the offers were too low. Another reason why Johnson did not accept several of these offers was because they were conditioned that he guarantee that the wool had not been damaged and, as Johnson stated on the witness stand, “I didn’t know how much damage” it had suffered and did not want to take the chance of having the purchaser come back on him for a “big draw-back”.

The plaintiff in his testimony stated that his action in declining to accept these offers to purchase was approved by a Mr. Hill, the Manager of the Adjustment Company, employed by the insurer to adjust the claim of loss made by Johnson. Subsequently, several efforts were made by the parties to adjust this claim of loss submitted by Johnson to the insurer but with no result, and on October 10, 1939 it appears that the defendant finally rejected plaintiff’s claim and declined to pay any more than the S231 heretofore mentioned.

On the trial it was stipulated between the parties that the number of pounds of wool stored in the Hawley Warehouse was as stated above and that the “cash market value of plaintiff’s 1937 wool clip at Casper, Wyoming on the 23rd day of September, 1937,” the day before the fire, was “25^ per grease pound”. It was also stipulated that:

“On the 12th day of June, 1939, plaintiff sold his 1937 wool clip to A. W.

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Bluebook (online)
137 P.2d 615, 59 Wyo. 120, 1943 Wyo. LEXIS 9, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/johnson-v-hanover-fire-insurance-wyo-1943.