tain time, and another that he shall not sue after a certain time. These do not clash. They merely necessitate the construction that the intention was to give the insured such period in which to maintain his action after he could sue as would be left after deducting from the time limited the time which must elapse before the right to sue could accrue.
But we find in these cases this extraordinary reasoning: They assert that this doctrine will often kill the action before it could have life. The answer is short and simple. Every limitation in a contract is void which does not leave the plaintiff a reasonable time in which to sue after his right to sue has become perfect. When an insurance company has declared that a suit must be brought within forty days after loss has occurred, and that no action shall be maintained until thirty days after proof of loss, the duty of the court is not to interpolate into the contract a provision that the limitation runs from the date the cause of action accrues in place of one expunged by the same process, to-wit: the provision that the time runs from the time the loss occurs, which is the date of the fire; but the court should invoke against the company the rule that a right of action shall not, in effect, be destroyed by a limitation which leaves the plaintiff an unreasonably short time to sue after his cause of action has accrued,and declare the limitation clause void. If other provisions of the policy make it appear that “in every case a reasonable time will not be left after the right to sue has become perfect, the limitation is void. If, acting in good faith, and with all proper diligence, it transpires in any particular case that other provisions of the policy to be complied with as conditions precedent to aright of action could not be performed in time to leave a reasonable time thereafter in which to sue, the limitation is inoperative in such a case; and, if the company has induced the insured to believe that the loss will be paid, or that the limitation will not be insisted on, until it is too late to sue, the limitation is waived. Thus the insured is fully protected by the application of known and established principles. The contract is construed as it is written, and the time when the limitations begin to run, if at all, is fixed, and not uncertain. In Johnson v. Insurance Co., 91 IIL. 92, the lim-
