INCONTESTABLE CLAUSE   213

it. If the contract is against public policy the court will not lend its aid to its enforcement. The defense need not be pleaded. If at any time it appears in the process of the action that the contract sued upon is one which the law forbids, the court will refuse relief. The parties to an illegal contract can not by stipulating that it shall be incontestable, tie the hands of the court and compel it to enforce contracts which are illegal and void. If this were allowed, then the law might be evaded in all eases and the aid of the court plight be secured in aid of its infraction. In Hall v. Coppell, 7 Wall. 559, 19 L. Ed. 244, the United States Supreme Court said: "The defense is allowed, not for the sake of the defendant, but of the law itself. The principle is indispensable to the purity of its administration. It will not enforce what it has forbidden and denounced. The maxim, `Ex dolo malo non oritur actio,' is limited by no such qualification. The proposition to the contrary strikes us as hardly worthy of serious refutation. Whenever the illegality appears, whether the evidence comes from one side or the other, the disclosure is fatal to the case. No consent of the defendant can neutralize its effect. A stipulation in the most solemn form to waive the objection, would be tainted with the vice of the original contract, and void for the same reasons. Wherever the contamination reaches, it destroys. The principle to be extracted from all the cases is, that the law will not lend its support to a claim founded upon its viola

tion." * * * Judgment affirmed.43

PHILADELPHIA LIFE INS. CO. v. BURGESS.
District Court, E. D. South Carolina, 1927. 18 Fed. (2d) 599.

In Equity. Suit by the Philadelphia Life Insurance Company against Mrs. Sallie Wright Burgess and others. Decree for complainant in part, and in part for defendants. * * *

ERNEST F. COCIIa. N, District Judge. For a proper understanding of the questions involved in the various motions now under consideration in the above-entitled cause, it will be necessary to state the various steps that have been taken.

The bill was filed on June 28, 1926. The substance of the bill is that one Richard F. Wright on June 10, 1924, applied to the plain-tiff for insurance on his life in the sum of $10,000, to be issued in two policies, payable to his sister, Sallie W. Burgess, one of the defendants herein: that thereafter two policies, Nos. 80922 and

43 Accord: Anctil v. Manufacturers Life Ins. Co. (1899') App. Cas. 604, Comment (1900) 13 Harv. L. Rev. 412. Contra: Wright v. Mutual Ben. Life Assn. (1890) 118 N. Y. 237, 23 N. E. 186, 6 L. R. A. 731, 16 Am. St. 749.