People ex rel. Sea Insurance v. Graves

248 A.D. 255, 289 N.Y.S. 177, 1936 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6130
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedJune 25, 1936
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 248 A.D. 255 (People ex rel. Sea Insurance v. Graves) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People ex rel. Sea Insurance v. Graves, 248 A.D. 255, 289 N.Y.S. 177, 1936 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6130 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1936).

Opinions

Bliss, J.

The State Tax Commission has assessed against the petitioner a tax on the excess of its gross premiums charged over the deductions allowed by law for business done within the State during the calendar year ending December 31,1926. We are reviewing that assessment and a determination made after a hearing affirming such assessment. The petitioner is one of four insurance companies [257]*257incorporated under the laws of England and licensed to do a marine insurance business in the States of. New York and New Jersey, of which Chubb & Sons, a partnership composed of citizens of New York and New Jersey, were the managers in the United States. Chubb & Sons were also the agents of the Federal Insurance Company, a New Jersey corporation admitted in New York, and of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, a Connecticut corporation admitted in both New York and New Jersey. Each of these corporations wrote marine insurance policies in the State of New York. Under agreements made in the State of New Jersey on September 25, 1925, to which these companies were party, these companies severally agreed to reinsure one another with respect to certain percentages of specified marine and transportation risks that any of them might assume directly. The reinsurance policies for the insurance thus ceded by each of these companies to the other were executed in New Jersey by the manager of the New Jersey office of Chubb & Sons. Authority to issue the policies was communicated by the office manager and chief executive of the New York office of Chubb & Sons to the New Jersey office. Accounts of premiums due the various companies from each other for reinsurance thus ceded were kept by Chubb & Sons and credit balances were paid by check at the New Jersey office. The premiums which have been used to measure the additional tax assessed against the petitioner were received by it for business originally written in the State of New York by the Hartford and the Federal and reinsured in part by the petitioner. The policies of reinsurance ran to the benefit of the original insurer. The question thus presented was whether the premiums by which the additional tax has been measured were premiums charged for business done within the State of New York and whether the making of these contracts of reinsurance was the doing of business within that State.

Policies of insurance are local transactions and governed by local statutes. (Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. [U. S.] 168.) The original contract under which this reinsurance was carried out between the various companies here involved was not made in New York. The policies of reinsurance were not issued in New York, nor were the premiums paid in New York. The losses under these policies of reinsurance were payable to Chubb & Sons for the account of the original insurer. There is no privity of contract under the reinsurance between the original insured and the reinsurer. (Morris & Co. v. Skandinavia Insurance Co., 279 U. S. 405.) A reinsurer is under no contract obligation to the original insured and is not [258]*258liable to him. (Greenman v. General Reinsurance Corporation, 237 App. Div. 648.) The contract for the ceding of these risks between the various companies became effective as soon as the original insurance was written in New York.

The petitioner here was not doing business within the State of New York when it contracted to issue and did issue these policies of reinsurance. The entire transaction of reinsurance was performed outside of New York State. The fact that the request for the issuance of such reinsurance came from New York State does not give that State jurisdiction. This question has been passed upon definitely by the Supreme Court of the United States in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (165 U. S. 578). In that case an open policy of marine insurance was made outside of the State of Louisiana. A communication was mailed from within the State of Louisiana to the insurance company at New York advising it that insurance was wanted on certain cotton which was, at the time of the communication, within the State of Louisiana. Premiums were remitted from New Orleans and both premiums and losses under the contract of insurance were payable in New York. The court held that the contract was made outside of the State of Louisiana, was a valid contract to be performed outside of that State, although the subject was property temporarily within the State, that the giving of the notice was a mere collateral matter and was not the contract itself but was an act performed pursuant to a valid contract which the State had no right or jurisdiction to prevent. The court also held that the insurance company had done no business of insurance within the State of Louisiana and had not subjected itself to the jurisdiction of that State.

The Allgeyer case was cited with approval and followed by the same court in Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue (275 U. S. 87). In that case the plaintiff, which was a Spanish corporation with its head office in Barcelona, procured insurance on tobacco then stored in the Philippines from two insurance companies, one of London and the other of Paris. Notice of the fact that this tobacco was thus stored and was being shipped from time to time was sent by the plaintiff’s office in the Philippines to Barcelona and the head office thereupon procured the insurance. Payment of the premiums was made at Barcelona. The Collector of Internal Revenue, acting under authority of certain Philippine statutes, attempted to collect a tax on these premiums. The court held that the contract and the premiums paid under it were not under the jurisdiction of the government of the Philippine Islands and the effecting of this insurance was doing business outside of the Philippine Islands.

[259]*259In Stone v. Penn Yan, K. P. & B. Railway (197 N. Y. 279) written applications for insurance policies were mailed from within New York State to an insurance company at its office in Philadelphia. The policies were issued in Pennsylvania and ma’led to New York. Our Court of Appeals held that the contracts of insurance were made in Pennsylvania, for it was there that the applications were received and acted upon.”

In the case of Huntington v. Sheehan (206 N. Y. 486) the defendants sent a letter from within New York to a Massachusetts insurance company at its Massachusetts office asking that an insurance policy on defendants’ property then in New York be renewed. Such renewal policy was issued in Massachusetts and mailed from there to the defendants in New York. The Court of Appeals held that this resulted, not in the transaction of business in New York, but in the consummation in Massachusetts of a contract which was lawful in New York.

In People ex rel. Kirkman v. Van Amringe (266 N. Y. 277) the Court of Appeals stated: “It is settled law that a State cannot forbid contracts of insurance relating to risks within its limits from being made between a citizen and a corporation in another State.” A foreign insurance company had issued in the city of Washington a policy of group insurance covering the members of an unincorporated association located in the city of New York.

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Bluebook (online)
248 A.D. 255, 289 N.Y.S. 177, 1936 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6130, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-ex-rel-sea-insurance-v-graves-nyappdiv-1936.