Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/440

 ,428, PEDEBAI. REPORTER, �ehould be enforced according to the real intention of the parties. Having taken the plaintiff's money, and induced him to beiieve that he was insured, the insurance company ■will not be allowed to say that the contract is void because the effort to make it conform to the rules of law was a fail- ure. The insurance company is bound by the aets of Hud- son à Bro. What the agent knew the principal must be held to bave known. The plaintiff paid his premium to the insur- ance company, and for its own purposes it put the insurance in the name of its own agents, and delivered the written instrument to the plaintiff as evidence that he was insured. Effect should be given to the plain intention of the parties by allowing the plaintiff to prove by paroi that the insurance was put in the name of Hudson & Bro. for his benefit. Courts take notice of the well-known method of doing insur- ance business. Underwriters are trusted to, make, their pol- icies express the intentions of the parties. Few stop to read and study their policies before accepting thepi and paying their premiums. : Knowing that ;they are thus trusted, under- wjiters must ac-t in the utmost good faith with those who deal with them. In applying insurance contracts to the proper subject-matter, and the party or parties intended to be covered by the risk, courts have been liberal in receiving paroi testi- mony in fa ver of the assured, It is well-settled that when a written contract is made by an "agent, in his own name, the undisclosed principal may sue upon it and prove by paroi evi- dence that the contract was made for his bepefit ; and this may be done although the other. party had no knowledge of the agency and supposed that he was dealing with one who was aoting for himself . Huntington v. Knox, 7 Cush. 371 ; Story on Agency, § 61. �In Insurance Go. v. Chase, 5 Wallace, 509, William Chase, J. W. Mungen, and three others were trustees of a church, and beld the legal title to it in trust for the society. Mungen was also agent of the Howard Insurance Company. As such agent he took a fire risk of $5,000 for his company on the church property, in favor of William Chase, who paid the premium eut of bis private means on account of the parish, with the ����