Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/321

 COFPBT V. UNIVBESAL LIFB INS. CO. 309 �the United States Trust Company, and that the complainant should then either have made payment, or ■within sixty days thereafter have transmitted his policy, duly receipted, and asked for a paid-up policy, it may well be replied that in the preceding February the secretary of the company had as- serted to the complainant that his policy was already for- feited ; and the statements in the letter of March 8th, just recited, were such as to naturally lead the assured to under- stand that his policy had wholly lapsed, and that, if anything was thereafter done in the way of reviving.it, it could only be done after the company was clear of the court proceedings, and after it could act as a company, and,then only as an.aot of grace or favor. And thus the action of the, company mcide it natural to suppose that nothing could be done by either it or the complainant until after its original power and. author- ity to act were restored to it; and it was upoq this theory, evidently, that the oomplainant's counsel acted from August, 1878, to March,. 1879, as is showj;! by their letters of inquiry, in evidence, written to the company.,,. !.• �It is noticeable, also, that although the or^der of the court in New York, made October 29, 1878, by which the company was authorized to resume business, required nptice, of ; the order to be sent to policy-holders, and gave to the latter niji^ty. days after sending such notice in which to pay past-due premiums, no notice in obedience to that order was sent tp the complainant, and it was not until about February 2&, 1879, — nearly a month after the ninety days had expired, — that the complainant, by his counsel, was informed of that order, although his counsel had been in correspondence with the company since August, 1878. Finally, in March, 1879, the company was requested either to recognize the policy by accepting the past-due premiums or to issue a paid-up policy on transmission of the original, duly receipted. The reasons assigned by the company for refusing so to do were that the notices before mentioned were duly sent to the complainant ; that he did not write to the company ; and that he made no attempt to ascertain the faots, either from the company or its local agent in Milwaukee, — most of which reasons were, ��� �