Mid-States Insurance v. America Fidelity & Casualty Co.

This is an appeal from a judgment which denied relief to Mid-States Insurance Company, plaintiff in the court below, and also denied relief to Anglo-California National Bank of San Francisco, which intervened in the action and filed its complaint against the same defendants, appellees herein.

*723 The facts in the case appear in the trial court’s opinion which is reported in 125 F.Supp. 34 , where they are outlined at greater length than will be necessary for the purposes of this opinion. As the findings disclosed, both Mid-States and the defendant American Fidelity and Casualty Company were corporations engaged in the business of writing and selling automobile insurance policies in the State of California. Mid-States is an Illinois corporation and American Fidelity is chartered in Pennsylvania. The defendant, American Plan Corporation, is a New York corporation; it was the manager of the automobile physical damage insurance business of American Fidelity.

In May, 1947, Mid-States appointed the defendant Joseph Lotz its general agent for California, and he remained an agent in that company until January 21, 1952. In November, 1950, American Fidelity also appointed Lotz as its…