William Cushing

This case involved a dispute over a marine insurance policy issued by the Marine Insurance Company of Alexandria on a vessel, where the policy broadly covered named parties and others with interest and lacked any warranty of neutrality. The insurer raised multiple pleas seeking to avoid liability, including claims of concealment of interested parties, lack of valid consideration due to an unpaid premium note, and material misrepresentations regarding the vessel's age, tonnage, and value. The Supreme Court held that the fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth pleas were insufficient as a defense, affirming judgment for the plaintiff on those, while reversing on the sixth plea and entering judgment for the plaintiff, because the policy terms were expansive enough to preclude concealment issues, the consideration was validly stated, and the alleged misrepresentations were neither shown to be material to the insured risk nor sufficiently pleaded to affect the contract. The Court further noted that in a covenant action on a sealed policy, no averment of abandonment was required.

business & regulatoryproperty

The case concerned whether Daniel Coxe, born in colonial New Jersey and later joining British forces, retained the capacity to inherit land there after independence or had become an alien whose property rights were lost. The Court held that Coxe remained a subject of New Jersey owing allegiance under its post-1776 laws, never validly expatriated, and that the 1783 Treaty of Peace neither altered his status nor overrode those state laws, so he could take land by descent and the plaintiff's lessor could recover. The reasoning rested on New Jersey's sovereign authority to define and enforce allegiance for its residents, the legislature's explicit treatment of persons like Coxe as offenders against that allegiance rather than aliens, and the treaty's silence on individual citizenship questions, which it left to the states.

immigrationpropertyfederal power