Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/360

 334 OCTOBER TERMj 1907. Opinion of the Court. 209 U.S. original company would have, and also to have the benefit of any time for delay or examination which the original com- pany might claim, so that the liability of the reinsuring com- pany shah be coextensive only with the liability and not with the ability, so to speak, of the original company.. "The o.riginal company may have rcinsured for the purpose for which reinsurance is usually, if not universally, accom- plished-for the purpose of supplying itself with a fund with which to meet its obligations. It may have placed its own funds entirely out of its control; it may have divided its capi- tal among its stockholders, and may depend solely upon the reinsurance to make good its liability to policyholders. "The intention of this clause was to make the reinsuring company's liability coextensive, and only coextensive. with the liability of the original insurance company. "For instance, suppose an insurance company in the city of Chicago wishes to go out of buslncss. It has money enough to reinsure all its risks, and does so, and goes out of the in- surance business. That Company does not keep a fund on hand any longer for the purpose of meeting losses as they fall in, but depends upon its reinsurance. "Now, it is to my mind absurd to say, if a loss occurs on one of those reinsured policies, that the company primarily liable is to have its claim against the reinsming 'company limited by its' ability to meet its obligations to its original policyholders. The very object of making the policy of re- insurance was 'to place the company in funds with which to make its policyholders whole, and that is defeated if the con- struction which is insisted upon by the assignee is the true one. "The fair, liberal construction, it seems to me, of this clause, and the salutory one, is to assume that the true intent of it-- the judicial meaning--is that the liability of the reinsurance company is to be no greater than that of the original company; that they are not to. be compelled to pay any faster than the original company would be compelled to pay; that they are to have the benefit of any defense which the original company

�