Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/180

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itation provision required the action tobe brought within twelve months after the “loss occurred,” and it was declared that no action should be commenced until sixty days after proof of loss. Said the court: “The two clauses, considered together, obviously provide that the company shall have sixty days within which to make payment after notice and proof of loss, but in no event should a suit or action be commenced after the expiration of twelve months from the date of the fire producing the loss. Any other meaning attached to the language, it seems to us, would be strained, unreasonable, and in direct violation of the plain intention of the parties clearly expressed.” To same effect are Insurance Co. v. Wells, (Va.) 3 8. E. Rep. 349; Chambers v. Insurance Co., 51 Conn. 17. Chandler v. Insurance Co., 21 Minn. 85, apparently supports this view. There were two distinct clauses in the limitation provision of the policy in that case, one of which clearly contemplated that the insured should have twelve months after the cause of action accrued, and the other of which declared that the action must be brought within twelve months after the loss had occurred. The court held that the limitation began to run from the date when the right to sue became perfect, on the ground that the clauses were inconsistent, and therefore that must prevail which was most favorable to the insured. But, by holding that the two clauses were inconsistent, it necessarily adjudged that the clause which required the action to be brought within the time specified after the loss had occurred referred to the date of the fire, and did not refer to the accruing of the cause of action as the date from which such language would make the limitation run, as that was what the other clause was construed to, and clearly did, mean. “The court in Semmes v. Insurance Co., 13 Wall. 10, appears to have adopted the same construction, although this precise question was not in the case; the court saying: “It is not said, as in a statute, that a plaintiff shall have twelve months from the time his cause of action accrued to commence suit, but twelve months from the time of loss, yet by another condition the loss is not payable until sixty days after it shall have been ascertained and proved. The condition is that no suit or action shall be sustainable un-