SUBROGATION is a doctrine applicable only to contracts of marine and fire insurance. It has no relation to life assurance, or to insurance against accidents. The principle of the doctrine is that on payment of a loss the insurers are entitled to enforce all the remedies, whether in contract or in tort, which the insured has against third parties, whereby the insured can compel such third parties to make good the loss insured against ; and if the insured enforces or receives the advantage of such remedies, the insurers are entitled to receive from the assured the advantage of such remedies. Such is the substance of the exposition of the doctrine by Lord-Justice Brett in Castellain v. Preskm. Take an illustration. Where the landlord insures, and he has a covenant by the tenant to repair, the insurance office, on pay ment of a loss, succeeds to the right of the landlord against the tenant ; and if the tenant does repair, the office has the right to receive from the landlord a benefit equivalent to the benefit which the landlord received from such repair. In Castellain v. Preston a vendor had contracted with a purchaser for the sale, at a specified sum, of a house, which had been insured against fire with an insurance company by the vendor. The contract of sale contained no reference to the insurance. After the date of the contract, but before the
date fixed for completion, the house was damaged by fire, and the vendor received the insurance money from the company. The purchase was after wards completed, and the purchase-money agreed upon, without any abate ment on account of the damage by fire, was paid to the vendor. It was held that the company were entitled to recover from the vendor, for thdir own benefit, a sum equal to the insurance money. This judgment was an application of the principle of subrogation. If an insur4 who has suffered a loss he has insured against, receives compensation therefor from his insurers and then, subsequently, receives further compensation from other sources in respect of the same loss, the insurers are entitled to recover from him any sum which he may have received in excess of the loss he actually sustained (Darrell v. Tibbitts). And not only can the insurers receive that, but they are also entitled to recover the full value of any rights or remedies of the insured against third parties which have been renounced by him and to which, but for such renunciation, the insurers would have a right to be subrogated (West of England Fire Insuran,ce Co. v. Isaacs).