Dominion Fire Insurance Co v Nakata

Dominion Fire Insurance Company v Nakata is the Supreme Court appeal case from the Alberta Court of Appeal Case Nakata v Dominion Fire Insurance Co 1915 (21 D.L.R. 26). As with the first case reported in 1915 that dealt with Minnie Nakata’s attempt at insuring a bawdy house, it begins on the pretext of the legality of cancelling insurance. However, the justices quickly dive into an explicit discussion on the morality of Minnie Nakata, her business, the insurance company, and her husband. Unlike most other cases involving litigants of Japanese descent, the Chief Justice directly addresses Minnie Nakata’s ethnic background. On page 296, he is recorded as stating that he does ‘not think it is particularly creditable for the appellants to allege as one of the grounds for trying to escape liability that the respondent is a foreigner, and, as to the fact that she is of bad character, it appears on the face of the policy, issued under the corporate seal of the company and the signature of its president, that the premises were kept by the insured as a disorderly house’. The decision of the court was to allow the appeal without costs, though with Duff and Idington JJ dissenting.