A CONTRACTOR   729

agent was fully and accurately informed of the nature and extent of the interest he was asked to insure. The application was ore terms and no record was made of it. Both the testimony of the witness Bliss and the certificate of insurance itself go far to corroborate Thurston's evidence on this point. The case is brought directly within our rule. * * * The city court gave judgment in favor of the plaintiff for what the testimony showed the latter had lost in labor and expenses incurred, and in the profits he was pre-vented from realizing. Nothing was allowed for the tools destroyed. We fully concur with the city court in its finding.

Affirmed.13

FOLEY v. MANUFACTURERS & BUILDERS FIRE INS. CO.

Court of Appeals of New York. 1897.
152 N. Y. 131, 46 N. E. 318, 43 L. R. A. 664.

Action by Edward II. Foley and others against the Manufacturers' & Builders' Fire Insurance Company of New York. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

ANDRrws, C. J. The sole question in this case is whether the plaintiffs had an insurable interest equal to the full value of the incomplete buildings in course of construction on their lot when the fire occurred. It is the contention on the part of the defendant that as the houses were being constructed under a contract by which the contractors were to furnish the materials and build the houses (above the foundations), and to complete them by a time specified, which had not expired at the time of the fire, for a specified sum to be paid within 10 days after their completion, the plaintiffs had no interest to protect in the structures while in their incomplete state, since their destruction by fire would be the loss of the contractors, and not of the owners, whose obligation to build and complete the houses, as the condition of payment, would continue after as before the fire. It may be admitted that the con-tractors would remain bound by the contract, notwithstanding the destruction of the buildings by fire, and that the owners would not be bound to pay for the work done or materials supplied up to the time of the fire. Tompkins v. Dudley, 25 N. Y. 272, 82 Am. Dec. 349.

The contention of the defendant rests upon a misconception of the insurer's contract, and as to the insurable interest of the plain-

13 A building had been decreed a nuisance and ordered torn down. Before being torn down it was destroyed by fire. Held: The insurance thereon was recoverable. Irwin v. Westchester Fire Ins. Co. (1908) 58 Mise. 441, 109 N. Y. S. 612, affd. 133 App. Div. 920, 118 N. Y. S. 1115, Comment (1908) 8 Colum. L. Rev. 506.