SURAJMULL NAGOREMULL Vs. TRITON INSURANCE COMPANY LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants, the plaintiffs below, brought their suit for breach of an alleged contract to " issue policies of insurance covering war risks on goods " shipped or to be shipped by them " at the rate prevailing at the time of the plaintiff firm's declaration of the steamer, by which goods, as aforesaid, were to be shipped " (Plaint para. 3). As developed in further paragraphs, this was founded on (a) a written quotation by the defendants of their lowest rate on jute per Constantions XII at 1/2 per cent, and war risk at 5 per cent., less 10 per cent.; (b) an acceptance of this rate by the plaintiffs; and (o) an arrangement that the plaintiffs should supply the defendant company with a statement of the approximate amount to be covered, Ultimately there was a declaration for an aggregate amount of -10,870, for which sum the defendants refused to issue a policy, whereon the plaintiffs insured elsewhere at higher premiums and claimed the excess as their damages in the action. There was no loss of the goods at all.

(2.) Pearson J., who tried the case, found the contract and breach proved and gave the plaintiffs decree, but the High Court, holding the contract to be insufficiently established, set that decree aside.

(3.) On being informed that the alleged contract arose on an acceptance by word of mouth of a letter quoting a rate of premium and on a declaration by word of mouth, not of the name of the steamer by which the goods were to be shipped, but of the expected value of the plaintiffs's goods to be loaded on board of her, and that the breach alleged was the defendants refusal to issue a policy, their lordships, struck by the divergence in this case from ordinary underwriting practice as known in this country and by the singularity of an enforceable contract by word of mouth to issue a policy of marine insurance, inquired whether there was no legislation in India corresponding to the Stamp Act, 1891 (54 & 55 Vic. c. 39), Section 93 (1). Their attention was then drawn by counsel to the Indian Stamp Act, No. II of 1899, e. 7 of which provides that (with exceptions not now material) " no contract for sea insurance shall be valid unless the same is expressed in a sea policy," a provision which re-enacted the original enactment of 1894.