STAGG
v.
INSURANCE COMPANY
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An insurance agent challenged his former employer's right to terminate his agency and reduce his commissions based on revised terms contained in a circular issued fifteen years before the dispute arose. The Supreme Court affirmed that the agent was bound by the terms of the later circular, holding that by accepting and acting upon it for fifteen years while receiving compensation calculated under those terms, he was estopped from denying it represented their contractual agreement. The Court established that an agent who accepts and performs under modified contract terms for an extended period cannot later claim those terms were not binding.
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Mr. Justice MILLEE delivered the opinion of the court.
The right of the insurance company to terminate the agency of the plaintiff, at its discretion, is not denied by his counsel, nor is there any serious effort to support the offer to prove the custom. Indeed, if the court was right in holding that the contract between the parties was expressed by the language of the second circular, it is quite clear there was no room for usage, for it is there expressly stated that the commission on the renewal premiums, like 'those on the original premiums, was to be paid only so long as the plaintiff continued to be the agent of the company.
Nor can we doubt for a moment that the later circular must bo held to represent the agreement of the parties as to compensation. After having received that circular and acted on it for fifteen years, received and adjusted his compensation by it, he is estopped to deny that it was the contract under which h,e acted. If there was any other contract it was for him to show it. He does not do this by producing, the circular of the year previous. If there was anything fraudulent., unfair, or illegal in the new terms offered, or in the mode in which he was induced to accept them, he should have shown it, but he' has not even attempted it.
We are, therefore, clearly of opinion that when it is shown that, as agent of the company, he received and acted upon that circular, he is bound by its terms as the measure of his compensation.
Judgment affirmed.
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Davies v. Kahn, 251 F.2d 324 (4th Cir. 1958)…defendant, is inconsistent with its present claim that there was no unconditional contract between the parties, and consequently the defendant is estopped now from asserting such a claim. See: Stagg v. Connecticut Mut. Life Insurance Company, 1870, 10 Wall. 589, 19 L.Ed. 1038; Great Eastern Oil Co. v. DeMert & Dougherty, 1942, 350 Mo. 535, 166 S.W. 2d 490; Reck v. Daley, 1943, 72 Ohio App. 307, 48 N.E. 2d 879. Accordingly, the judgment is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsis…