VENDOR AND VENDEE   739

No doubt it is a mere accident that there was such a policy and there was such a right. The vendor could not have complained if there had been no insurance. But that has occurred in a great variety of cases in which equitable rights have arisen. Where there is a creditor, a debtor, and a surety, and the surety finds out that by something to which he was not privy and of which he had never heard, somebody else had become surety, or the creditor had obtained security, the surety has a right to obtain contribution from such surety, or to obtain such security as the case may be, and the creditor releasing such surety or parting with such security would probably find himself in considerable peril. * * *

I n my view of the case it is perhaps unnecessary to refer to the Act of Parliament as to fire insurance. But that Act seems to me to spew that a policy of insurance on a house was considered by the Legislature, as I believe it to be considered by the universal consensus of mankind, to be a policy for the benefit of all persons interested in the property, and it appears to me that a purchaser having an equitable interest under a contract of sale is a person having an interest in the house within the meaning of the Act. I believe that there is no case to be found in which the liability of the insurance office has been limited to the value of the interest of the insured in the house destroyed. If a tenant for life having insured his house has the house destroyed or damaged by fire, I have never heard it suggested that the insurance office could cut down his claim by shelving that he was of extreme old age or suffering from a mortal disease. In the case of Collingridge v. Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, [3 Q. B. D. 173] the vendor recovered the whole amount of the loss, although it was absolutely certain, having regard to the solvency of his purchaser, that he would really never suffer any loss at all, personally or otherwise, as trustee for such purchaser.

Of authority on the subject, there is, no doubt, the express decision of Vice-Chancellor Kindersley against the Plaintiff, but against that there are to be set off the very distinct opinions of Lord St. Leonards and Vice-Chancellor Parker, men of great knowledge of equity and of great accuracy even in their dicta.

But I prefer to rest my judgment on the fact that the relation between the vendor and the purchaser became, and was in law, as from the (late of the contract and up to the completion of it, the relation of trustee and cestui que trust, and that the trustee received the insurance money by reason of and as the actual amount of the damage done to the trust property. The Plaintiff puts his case also on the ground of the representations made to him by the Defendant's solicitor and agent. What took place appears to me to be this. The solicitor said to the purchaser, I don't know who is entitled, but the vendor is the only person who has a legal claim, and I will make the claim accordingly whichever is