FIRE INSURANCE LITIGATION — in such a case the companies naturally desire as many trials as possible. In the large majority of cases, however, it would no doubt be most satisfactory for all con cerned to let the whole question be deter mined in one single suit to which all com panies on the risk are parties and by which all shall be bound. By this process the litigation will be most quickly terminated, and the rights of all the parties most cer tainly and fully determined, and with the least possible expense in money, and time of attorneys, parties, and witnesses in court. The companies themselves, where they have been sued in separate actions at law, have on a number of occasions sought to have all the issues consolidated and deter mined in a single trial. And they have usually succeeded in this by bringing a bill in equity for the purpose, based upon the undoubted jurisdiction of courts of equity to prevent a multiplicity of suits. In one recent instance of this sort the court said: "We think the equity jurisdiction is main tainable on the ground of the prevention of a multiplicity of suits, as well as upon the inadequacy of the remedy at law. The very same principles of law and the very same facts determine each case. Besides, it is important to note that there could be but one true fixation of the amount of loss and yet each jury might put .it at a different sum." Tisdale v. Ins. Co. of No. Am. (1904 Miss.) 36 Southern 568. See also, Virginia Carolina Chemical Co. v. Home Ins. Co. et al (1902) 113 Fed. i. The same principles should apply with equal force where it is the plaintiff instead of several defendants who seeks to litigate his rights all in a single suit, and such is the trend of the few decisions that there are upon the question. We find, however, in the Hartford Fire Insurance Co. v. Post (1901) 25 Texas Civil Appeals 428, the opposite view, in spite of the fact that each policy contained the usual pro rata clause. In that case Pleasants, J., gives the reasons on this side of the argument
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most excellently and fully in the following language : "Appellants' first assignment complains of the ruling of the trial court in not sustain ing the first special exception made by both defendants to plaintiffs' petition on the ground of misjoinder of causes of action. These exceptions should have been sus tained. There is no privity between the defendants in this case, and no equities to be adjusted between them which would authorize a joinder of the separate and dis tinct causes of action sued on by plaintiffs. The contracts sued on were executed by different persons and at different times, and create no joint liability, and we know of no principle of law which would authorize the plaintiff to join these defendants in one suit upon both contracts. It may be that under the facts in this case no injury could result to the defendants by being sued jointly, but each has the legal right to have his case submitted to a jury entirely disconnected from any claim which the plaintiff may have against the other, and such right cannot be disregarded by the courts. The exception should have been sustained, and the plain tiffs required to amend their petition and elect upon which of the causes of action they would prosecute this suit." The weakness or defect in the above de cision lies in taking a too narrow view of the equities of the situation, and failing to see that the companies by their pro rata clause had in a sense joined all the con tracts into one, and had brought them selves into a position where they might all be affected by the disposition of a suit against any one. But the complete answer to the position of the court cannot be better stated than in the language of the decision in the recent case of Fegelson v. Niagara Fire Insurance Co. (1905 Minn.) 103 N. W. 495, where the court said: "It follows that the several policies set out in the complaint are not wholly inde pendent of each other, for they are so far correlated that by express stipulation of
