re-insurance

from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

Reinsurance \Re`in*sur"ance\ (-sh?r"ans), n.
   1. Insurance a second time or again; renewed insurance.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. A contract by which an insurer is insured wholly or in
      part against the risk he has incurred in insuring somebody
      else. See {Reassurance}.
      [1913 Webster]

from Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)

RE-INSURANCE, 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