Grangers' Mutual Fire Insurance v. Blieve

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The judgment in this case was for an amount of insurance money on tobacco destroyed by fire while stored on a farm in Anne Arundel County. According to the testimony of the appellee, plaintiff below, it was all burned during the day of March 9th, 1928, while she was away from home, in Baltimore, and she had no knowledge of the cause of the fire. Having insurance in the appellant company, on a standard form of policy, the appellee, on her return home, sent a hired man to an agent of the insurer to ask what she should do first, and, after the man returned, had her daughter write a letter to the company saying, “We must notify you that the buildings and tobacco crop was burned down today, on Mr. Brady’s place.

We can not say when, where or how it started because nobody was at home.” And in reply, she received from the company a note that they were sorry to hear about the fire, and would “send a man out to investigate the place.” After ⁴²⁸ that the appellee did nothing further, sent no additional notice, and furnished no proofs of loss, but, as she says,'“just waited for them to come out.” In a week or two a man came to the- appellee’s home while she was away, and a detective from Baltimore came later, to make an investigation, but the appellee, so far as she knows, saw no adjuster or representative of the insurance company. On July 2nd, 1928, nearly four months after the fire, the appellee and the company, by its president, executed an agreement in writing that no action taken by the company in investigating the cause of fire and ascertaining the amount of loss should waive or invalidate any of the conditions of the policy or any rights of the parties. And there was no other communication between the parties. At the trial the court refused an instruction that the plaintiff could not recover.

Defense is made on several grounds, but it seems to us unnecessary to consider any but that based upon the failure to furnish the sworn proofs of loss required by the policy. That failure, we think, constitutes a breach of the conditions of the insurance which must prevent recovery. The requirement is the