Legal Term: RE-INSURANCE

Definition: mar. contr. An insurance made by a former insurer, his executors, administrators, or assigns, to protect himself and his estate from a risk to which they were liable by the first insurance.

2. It differs from a double insurance (q. v.) in this, that in the latter cases, the insured makes two insurances on the same risk and the same interest.

3. The insurer on a re-insurance is answerable only to the party whom he has insured, and not to the original insured, who can have no remedy against him in case of loss, even though the original insurer become insolvent, because there is no privity of contract between them and the original insured. 3 Kent, Com. 227; Park. on Ins. c. 15, p. 276; Marsh. Ins. B. 1, c. 4, s. 4

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