Davis

This is an appeal from a judgment of the District Court in an action brought by appellee on an insurance policy, appellee being the named beneficiary thereof. A jury having been waived, the court gave judgment for appellee for the face value of the policy.

Throughout this opinion we shall refer to the plaintiff, appellant here, as the company, and to the defendant, appellee here, as the beneficiary.

The company appeals upon eighteen assignments of error, but all are determined by our consideration of assignment I which raises, as we hold, the broad question as to whether the judgment is supported by the evidence. Assignment I is based on an exception taken to the denial of appellant’s motion for judgment, which motion was made before submission of the case. The motion was not based on the specific ground that there was no substan *954 tial- evidence to sustain any other judgment or upon any other specific ground, but was general in form. There is authority that an exception to the denial of such a motion raises no question on appeal. Denver Live Stock Commission Co. et al. v. Lee et al., 8 Cir., 1927, 20 F.2d 531 ; Henry H. Cross Co. v. Texhoma Oil & Refining Co., 8 Cir., 1929,…

I concur. It is true that the dishonor of the check leaves the parties in the status *959 quo ante and that only what is done consciously after the company knows of the dishonor can be considered as an estoppel to deny the continuing insurance, despite the nonpayment of premiums. The letter of January 29, 1936, does contain such an estoppel.

When the insured, on December 11, 1935, sent $10.18, which would pay his .premiums to December 1, 1935, the company refused to accept it as payment because the insured failed to comply with other policy provisions for reinstatement. It held the money “subject to the order” of the insured. Hence up to the receipt of the dishonored check, on January 16, 1936, the policy was lapsed.

Unpaid premiums are not debts of the insured. Payment is no more than the performance of a condition precedent to the continuance of the insurance. Hence the insured did not owe the company the $10.18 on the premiums payable on or before December 1, 1935. If, before January 1, 1936, the company had applied the $10.18, which it held subject to insured’s order, to the premiums due on December 1, 1935, the grace period of 31 days would have extended the policy only to…