to focus on today is not the issues or facts as briefed and in our brief but i would like to focus on the arguments raised and apple history the primary issue here is in terms of ok but that's an internal policy the internal policy shouldn't impact the insurance rights under its contract now if you look at the insurance contract it gives the insured  i think i think it's an excellent policy to have however what credentials could have done and should have done so as so that the ensure was aware that it's right to unilaterally change the beneficiary or owner on her policy is to identify that in the policy now there are other places and the policy which say hey if you want to change something in short we have to consent to it ok in in this it's the portions related to beneficiary change and ownership change or on for thirty to one hundred thirty three in the appendix  and what it states is you insured may designate or change a beneficiary by sending us a crit request in a form that meets our needs if we receive your request we will fly and record the change and it issue from day one ok they knew from day one from somebody i knew or six they had been investigating exactly exactly so when did they say ok but mouat our initial investigation we have a problem we need to back this up further because we've got a policy against our agents owning or being beneficiaries on policies that they they write well this even at the end of the not end of march there is  communications with mr harvest that said internally we've approved your beneficiary change you'll be getting paid soon i'm ok and then it went into corporate investigate investigate if they hadn't paid don't you think they would have been sued almost immediately suppose the executor said to one of them oh yeah your blanket that money i know there's another daughter i want named barbara you're going to get that money so you can go do all these things you want to do and then the change we recognize in the policy that you absolutely have the right to change the beneficiary or ownership it was their own internal policies that they were hiding behind in shooting themselves in this last to change the policy ok but right now credential is hiding behind their internal policies and say well we handle it we had to do this investigation ok but but if they had to do that investigation would have been the smartest thing especially divorce was invalid now the company is clearly innocent here but you're saying credential was not in this correct correct there would have been an issue had they picked up the phone and talked with her they would have found out that there was another witness present when she signed those forms they were also found out that at the same time that she was changing this policy ownership and beneficiary form she was changing another policy which credential didn't pay out  reasons why they had the saddle as they were wasting all their money on the proceeds but i think the point is that if you're in prevention shootings and you have competing claims as you say there for a legitimate reason dispute all pru is saying is look we're going to hand it over to the court court you decide and that's what's going to please all about right but let's let's use an example ok in a pleader was one way to handle i agree with that however there's not that much of a difference between a declaratory judgment action and an inner pleader in terms of determining the rights of individuals to access policies and under  conduct an investigation of the cases you rely on have delays of much much longer than what happened here well let me ask you is not a jury issue though how how long the delay should take should it take six months should take a year should it take two years ok how long is it i mean isn't that an issue for the jury to determine what is a reasonably hard time a on a claim that the just or in a pleader that just took a few months after investigation she died in february and that brought  possible which is clay but still relates to the failure to pay what was the insurance proves it what about not speaking less with help us now i mean there is no communication there is this whole investigation and when you're talking about a and so by by by delenn a change as directed by the insurer there's always a chance that the ensure that the the insured might die you know while the whole thing is pending as what happened here obviously so why didn't the denture will then say you can change your your fisher because actual actually had a policy on it that it's not remotely think agent who is dealing with insured my overreach but that fact is not remote at all in fact mr hovis concedes that that's a legitimate policy in this testimony he concedes in his testimony that any number of old ladies have attempted to put him on his beneficiaries of his policy this is a real problem but to actually provide that specific circumstance as a basis for investigation in the policy itself would would be would be far more specific then you could ever have the company has an obligation to make sure that in any situation that the money that th money is paid to the right person and that the money that is paid is entitle to be to go out you want to know for sure that in fact the beneficiary that that the person's dead they require a death certificate all claims the basic policy provides that it will investigate any type of claim before it is paid for example if someone dies there's a suicide clause in some of the policies for a certain amount of time they're going to go back and look at that if there misrepresentation in the application for life insurance they're going to go back and look at that the policy doesn't say specifically we're going to go through all these particular instances but it does say that the company will investigate any claim in any circumstance surrounding the clinic the company is doing it was setting up a policy the nature of things sets up the possibility of lawsuits because unless it completes its investigation  sherry has tried to change the owner the sure it's tried to change the beneficiary and didn't do it and therefore the old beneficiary claims and so can the new one i mean it's setting itself up for a lawsuit but you're going to have that situation anyway in this particular instance there's been the suggestion that prudential somehow did something to goad mr potter into filing this claim in fact the test and i think what the claim was she she signed on january sixth a change of beneficiary a change of ownership so you had a month and a half before michelle died why didn't somebody if they were going to just a geisha and pick up the phone or meet her in some way find out from her directly is this what she really wanted to do first of all your honor the january sixth date i believe is wrong as well as january twenty third so i'm very six's the date of the wedding of the marriage licen license january twenty third one month date so now you're within one month now maybe it makes sense if you can get somebody out to actually physically meet with her perhaps but it's actually call her up on the phone the woman is terminally ill how are you going to know what condition she's and by making a phone call how are you even going to know who you're talking to i guess you only know it by making the offers what she said well if you accept that if you accept that that's an reasonable that the conduct here so how was he damaged how was he damaged he had his lawsuit nobody ever said we weren't going to pay him nobody ever said we were going to pay anybody what we said is we're not going to pay both mr potter has testified that the only reason there were not competing claims against this policy from day one was because hostess told him he was taking care of it over us never told him about using damage by if if you leave mislabel that obvious damage by virtue of not getting entire proceeds when in fact that was the intent of michele mr hovis put a little gaited the validity of that he could have little dated the validity of the change i chose to so he chose to suck i mean he had that option nothing  how is any of this how does it benefit prevent show to have to claimants instead of one the whole concept of a bad faith of a negligence is that is that potential is acting in its own self interest in order to do  prudential doesn't care if they were it would be hard to show bad faith gray her the argument that i hear is that that is prudential was was negligent by how it went about this claim well michelle was still alive and well you know your honor they look they look for documentation mr hovis didn't help things because he submitted the claim through the wrong procedure to begin with and it had to go back and waste some of the time he should have had an exact time of the procedure used he submitted a paper of the wrong section of prudential that should have had should have had other documentation with it and as a result they had to go back to him and get additional additional documentation to show that the exception that circumstances are an exception might apply and if you're looking at a period from january twenty third to february twentieth you're looking at a period of one month which is not a lot of time in sure and standards and again if you go back to the point how was he harmed if if in fact the change if in fact the change was valid he could have still got this money if it was not he didn't deserve anything and maybe he got fifty thousand that he wasn't entitle to but how did the fact that this change was not approved and the money handed to him on day one how did that affect him other than the fact that he didn't have money he might not have been entitled to now there was a suggestion that prevention could have filed a declar cost benefit but that was his choice that doesn't preclude him from having i mean that's that's just talking about the compensatory damages portion of another crime that doesn't impact than in the twenty eight days from january twenty third two there were twenty not picking up the phone and calling him a shower my guess is there that last week or two one could not have spoken to or anyway so let's say it was a two to three week i mean is that really the question it's not just that that portion is in terms of not hiding behind the shield of in the policy specifically saying hey if you want to do and i want to share or beneficiary changed we require consent i mean we get the right to prove that ok and it doesn't have to be specific  occur that's true it does have that duty but you're just rain they took too long to do it in the space they took they well they took a very long time  of taking too long before she died what they did was fail to comply with the insurance request they fail to process the change request even thou the policy mandated that