Case ID: ill-app_192/html/0016-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Scanlan", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Christiana Dombrowski, Appellee, v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Appellant.
    Gen. No. 19,608.
    (Not to be reported in full.)
    Appeal from the County Court of Cook county; the Hon. Isaac Hudson, Judge, presiding. Heard in the Branch Appellate Court at the October term, 1913.
    Reversed and remanded.
    Opinion filed February 4, 1915.
    Statement of the Case.
    Action by Christiana Dombrowski against the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, a corporation, to recover on a policy of life insurance for one thousand dollars. From a judgment for one thousand dollars against defendant in favor of plaintiff, defendant appeals.
    Abstract of the Decision.
    1. Instructions, § 87
      
      —when erroneous as to burden of proof. It is erroneous to instruct a jury in a civil case that the party having the burden of proof must furnish evidence which will satisfy the jury, since the jury are only required to find from a preponderance of the evidence.
    2. Insurance, § 908*—error of instructions requiring jury to be satisfied from evidence. In an action upon a life insurance policy, an instruction that it was for the jury to determine from the evidence the extent of the sickness of the insured and whether it was of such a character or nature as to make his reply to interrogatories material misstatements; that it was for them to say, from the evidence in regard to the extent of the nature and kind of sickness, whether the attack from which the insured suffered was of a character to make his answer “never sick since childhood” a material statement, that the burden of proof was on the defendant; that the defendant set up the defense and that the jury must be satisfied from the evidence that the untruth of the statement had been established, held to be prejudicially erroneous, since, in requiring the jury to be satisfied, it imposed a higher degree of proof than the law required.
    Hoyne, O’Connor & Irwin, for appellant; Carl J. Appell, of counsel.
    Forest Garfield Smith and Robert E. Cantwell, for appellee.
    
      
      See Illinois Notes Digest, Vols. XI to XV, and Cumulative Quarterly, same topic and section number.
    
   Mr. Justice Scanlan

delivered the opinion of the court.