CASES IN THE SUPREME COURT ALABAMA. LOVENTHAL V. HOME INSURANCE COMPANY. [112 ALABAMA, 108.] INSURANCE-INSURABLE INTEREST.-A vendee of land In possession, exercising acts of ownership under an executory contract of purchase, and holding the bond of the vendor to make title upon full payment of the purchase money, a portion of which remains unpaid, is the unconditional and sole owner of the land in fee, and entitled to recover for the loss of an insured building thereon, under a policy of insurance containing a condition that it "shall be void if the interest of the insured be other than unconditional and sole ownership, or if the subject of insurance be a building on ground not owned by the insured in fee simple." Mountjoy & Tomlinson, for the appellant. Ward & John, for the appellee. 112 HEAD, J. Contested policy of fire insurance. That portion of the policy material to the main question raised by the record, is as follows: "Mrs. Rebecca Loventhal, $700, on her twostory, frame, shingle roof building," etc. (describing it). "This entire policy shall be void if the interest of the insured be other than unconditional and sole ownership; or if the subject of insurance be a building on ground not owned by the insured in fee simple." The interest of Mrs. Loventhal in the land was that of vendee, under an executory contract of purchase holding the bond of the vendor to make title to her upon full payment of the purchase money-a portion of which remained unpaid. She was, and had been, for several years, in actual possession, under the contract of purchase, exercising all the claim and acts of ownership of an absolute owner; and had, since the purchase, erected upon the land the house forming the subject of insurance. The AM. ST. REP., VOL LVIL-2 (17) last installment of purchase money was past due. Upon these facts, is the policy void? It cannot be questioned that if the policy had merely defined the assured as the owner of the building, with stipulation, even, that it should be void if she was not owner, her interest would have answered the stipulation and rendered the contract of insurance valid and binding. No doubt can be raised that such an interest constitutes ownership that is insurable. The authorities are many, and all one way, upon the point. Speaking of the character of title such as Mrs. Loventhal's, we said in Wimbish v. Montgomery etc. Loan Assn., 113 69 Ala. 575: "The general principle prevailing in a court of equity is, that from the time a valid contract for the purchase of lands is entered into, the vendor, as to the land, becomes a trustee for the vendee, and, as to the purchase money, the vendee becomes a trustee for the vendor. When, as in the present case, the agreement is, in its legal nature, executory, the vendor covenanting to make title on the payment of the purchase money at a future day, a court of equity, pursuing its own maxim of looking upon or treating that as done which ought to have been done, or which the parties contemplate shall be done in the final execution and consummation of the contract, for most purposes, regards the contract as specifically executed. The vendee is the equitable owner of the land-the vendor is the owner of the purchase money. To the land a trust attaches; of it the vendor is seised for the use of the vendee. The trust binds the land, while the legal estate remains in the vendor; and it binds the heir or devisee succeeding to it, and every one claiming under the vendor, with the exception of a bona fide purchaser without notice: 1 Story's Equity Jurisprudence, secs. 789, 790. As land, the vendee may convey or devise it; and as land it is descendible to his heirs, who may, in a court of equity, compel the specific execution of the contract. If there is not a stipulation to the contrary, the contract of itself operates a transmutation to the vendee of the possession, entitling him to the right of entry and enjoyment: Reid v. Davis, 4 Ala. 83." We substantially reiterated these principles in Ashurst v. Peck, 101 Ala. 499. They are familiar to the textwriters: 2 Story's Equity Jurisprudence, secs. 789, 790; 1 Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence, secs. 368-372; 3 Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence, secs. 1161-1406. Again, in many of our decisions, we have said that the relation of vendor to vendee, in cases like the present, is precisely that of mortgagee or mortgagor. All the incidents of the latter relation attach to it: Bankhead v. |