Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/772

 764 FEDERAL REPORTER. �struction upon the policy which would render any wilfully false statement fatal ; and the question is whether that is the souud construction. �In construing a contract, the first and by far the most im- portant witness is the English language. AdjudgeJ cases, which resemble the case at bar to a greater or less extent, cannot often supply the place of the universal and overruling precedent of the common usage of mankind in their daily speech, excepting as they explain terms which have acquired a technical meaning. The only teehnical word in the con- dition under examination is fraud; and the authoritiea are entirely agreed that the word means, in law, what I ruled it to mean. Not that it may not be often used oHter, so to speak, in a more loose and general sense, but whenever it ïieeds to be defined, and a case depends upon it, that is its meaning, and, so far as I know, without exception. I under- stand, therefore, the phrase "fraud" or "attempt at fraud," by false swearing or otherwise, to mean an injury or attempted injury of the defendants, by immoral means, sueh as false swearing, that being one instance or example of mauy possi- ble means. �The defendants contend that the phrase makes ail false swearing to be a fraud, or an attempt at fraud, so that it would read : "AU false swearing or other fraud or attejoipt at fraud;" but this is a forced and non-natural construction, because it requires not only a transposition of the words, but also a change of the usual meaning of one of them, �The ruling also comports with the general law of insurance, which holds the insured to a rigid line of fair dealing, and gives the underwriter an advantage not given to the parties to most contracts, in that it defeats an honest claim if it has been dishonestly exaggerated. To go further would be to make a law beyond the general law of the land, and beyoud the usual meaning of the words of the contract, besides com- mitting the injustice of visiting a crime against morals only with a forfeiture of property in favor of one who eould not have been injured by it. To give to the word "fraud" a loose and latitudinarian meaning is inadmissible in such a case. ��� �