Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/335

823 FEDEBaL BSPOBTEB. �law, and that courts are always prompt to seize hold of any circumstances that indicate an election to waive a forfaiture, or an agreement to do so on -which the party has relied and acted. Any agreement, declaration, or course of action on the part of an insurance company which leads a party insured honestly to believe that by conforming thereto a forfeiture of his policy will not be incurred, foUowed by due conformity on his part, will and ought to estop the company from insisting upon the forfeiture, although it might be claimed under the express letter of the contract." And it was, aocordingly, in that case held that where an insurance company had been in the habit of notifying the assured of the time when and place where premiums were to be paid, he had reasonable cause to expeet and rely on receiving such notice, and that the com- pany was estopped from setting up that the policy was for- feited by the non-payment of a premium of which no such notice was given. In the present case it appears that in 1876 the company notified the assured that the Hennepin County Savings Bank, at Minneapolis, was its agent, to whom premi- ums should be paid. In March, 1877, the defendant ap- pointed a new agent at Minneapolis, and when notices were, in that month, sent out to policy holders, the company adopted a rule to send a circular with each notice, informing the assured of the place where and the agent to whom pay- ment should be made^ The jury find that this circular was not sent to Seamans. He did not, therefore, know of the change of the agency, and naturally supposed he was to pay to the party to whom he had paid the year before. He sent his money in due time to that party. He did not send it to St. Paul, at which place he was informed there was an agent, because he had been notified that he must pay to the agent at Minneapolis. That the company understood it to be their duty to inform him of the change of the agency, is clear from the fact that they adopted a rule to do this in ail cases, and omitted it in his case by oversight. �Under the circumstanc«s, I do not think the assured was bound to hunt for an agent in the city of Minneapolis to whom he could make payment. If he was bound to make, ����