Loss

1.

Privation; injury; damage. See Damage; Damages. A community of profits implies a community of losses: losses are, in a sense, nothing more than a diminution of profits.^ 2. Dam^e to or the entire destruction of an insured subject by a contemplated peril.

Actual loss

Where there is a real destruction of the subject. Constructive loss, or constructive total loss. When the injury is so great that the insured may abandon the remnant to the insurer.

Partial loss

When the subject is damaged but not destroyed.

Total loss

When the subject is wholly destroyed.

Total loss

The total destruction of the thing insured; also, such damage to the thing, though it may remain in specie, as renders it of little or no value to the owner. ' Actual total loss. When the subject insured wholly perishes, or its recovery is rendered irretrievably hopeless.*- It is not necessary to a total loss that there be an absolute extinction or destruction of the thing insured, so that nothing can be delivered. A destruction in specie, so that while some of its component elements or parts may remain, the thing which was insm-ed, in the character or description by which it was insured, is destroyed, is a total loss.^ As applicable to a building, means, not that its materials were utterly destroyed, but that the building, though part of it remains standing, has lost its identity and specific character as a building, and, instead, has become a brolcen mass, or cannot longer properly be designated as a building. Absolute extinction is not meant. "Wholly destroyed" may be an equivalent expression.* As long as a vessel exists in specie in the hands of the owner, although she may require repairs greater tlian her value, a case of *' utter loss," within the meaning of a bottomry and respondentia bond, does not arise and she continues subject to the hypothecation.^ I See 3 Bl. Com. 38, 45, 56. ' Priest V. Chouteau, 13 Mo. Ap. 856 (1882). ' [Livermore v. Newburyport Mar. Ins. Co., 1 Mass. *279 (1804), Sedgwick, J. • Burt V. Brewers', &c. Ins. Co., 9 Hun, 384 (1876); Biurill's Law Diet. ' Great Western Ins. Co. u Fogarty, 19 Wall. 640, 643 (1873), cases. Miller, J. • [Oshkosh Packing, &o. Co. v. Mercantile Ins. Co., 31 F. E. 204 (1887), Dyer, J.; May, Ins. § 421 o, cases; 1 Wood, Ins. § 107, cases. " Freight " may be lost in the sense that by reason of the perils insured against the ship has been prevented from earning freight; and, also, in the sense that it is lost to the owner, after it has been earned, by some circumstance unconnected with the contract between the assured and the underwriters on the freight.' See Avkkage; Indemnity; Insurance; Ooctjb. Proof of loss. A written and sworn statement, made to an insurance company by the beneficiary, of the fact of a loss. In fire insurance, analogous to the "protest" in marine insurance. The time when the loss occurred, the cause of it, the value of the property, the name of the owner, incumbrances, and like facts, are usually required to be furnished. Waiver of "preliminary proof of loss" by an insurer may be proved indirectly by circumstances, as well as by direct proof; and so also may authority in an agent to make the waiver be proved.^ Preliminary proof of a death is not required, when the insurer, on being notified thereof, denies his liability and declares that the insiu-ance will not be paid.^