738   RIGHTS OF INSURED

trust. That is to say, it is ascertained that while the legal estate was in the vendor, the beneficial or equitable interest was wholly in the purchaser. And that, in my opinion, is the correct definition of a trust estate. Wherever that state of things occurs, whether by act of the parties or by act or operation of law, whether it is ascertained from the first or after a period of suspense and uncertainty, then there is a complete and perfect trust, the legal owner is and has been a trustee, and the beneficial owner is and has been a cestui que trust.

This being the relation between the parties, I hold it to be an universal rule of equity that any right which is vested in a trustee

any benefit which accrues to a trustee, from whatever source or under whatever circumstances, by reason of his legal ownership of the property—that right and that benefit he takes as trustee for the beneficial owner. If the policy of insurance in this case were a col-lateral contract, such as the policy which a creditor effects on the life of his debtor, the case would be wholly different. But the policy of fire insurance is not, in my opinion, a collateral contract, it is not a wagering contract, a contract that if a fire happens then a certain sum of money shall be paid to the insurer; it is in terms and in effect a contract that, if the property is injured then the in. surance company will make good the actual damage sustained by the property. That damage, and that damage only, gives the right and is the measure of the right, and it seems to me impossible to say that it is not by reason of the legal ownership and in respect solely of the injury done to that legal ownership that the right to recover from the insurance company accrued to the insured. If the fire in this case had happened through the wrongful or negligent act of a third person while the contract was in fieri the legal right to sue for the damage would be in the vendor, but on the completion of the contract the purchaser would be entitled to use the name of the vendor as his trustee to sue for the damage so sustained, or, if the damages had actually been recovered in the interval, to re. corer the damages from the vendor. And it appears to me that there is no distinction in principle between this right and the right to use the vendor's name in an action on the contract of indemnity against loss by fire which the policy of insurance is. It is not, in my view of the ease, at all material to consider what would be the case if after actual conveyance and (luring the currency of the policy a fire had occurred. The vendor in that case would have no right as between him and the insurance office, and the purchaser would have no right of action, because one of the conditions of the policy excludes it, and independently of that condition the policy would, or might probably be held not to run with the land in the hands of the subsequent owner, and in that case there would not be that which is the foundation of the right—legal ownership and right in one person, and equitable ownership in another.