prevention this is a very clean case in terms of interpret ing a contract as a matter of law it presents to novo review the standard u question here is not does prudential have a reasonable interpretation the question is do they have the only reasonable interpretation and the first place that we go always to the policy and the first place where you covered well your honor we believe that in terms of page thirty four which is per cent of your amount of insurance life one hundred percent that that is a coverage grant and in fact the hyatt case which is a nine hundred forty four case but is still viable had almost identical facts in there on the cover page and although it was an ink stamp it said you have double in accident on page five it took away that ground and said it has to be a violent accident or it was more restrictive and what the ninth circuit held was the average layman knows what double ind these and that putting it on page five wasn't sufficient and in fact what they specifically held you on a was what they should have said was on the cover page dictionary on what the word amount means i'm going to pay the amount of your bill how much is that fifty percent of the bill the amount is commonly understood as the entire amount and page thirty four sarahs the amount payable depends upon the type of loss as shown below all benefits are subject to the limits below directing you below and it says percent of your amount of insurance life one hundred this is also overlaid by the fact that multiple cases including the hyatt case have found that the common understanding of double indemnity is doubl indemnity of the entire face amount of the policy now in this particular case the district court went to the table of contents and if you go to the table of contents there's a schedule of benefits that's listed at five schedule of benefits of what it's a life insurance policy you then go further down and you go to basic accidental death and dismemberment coverage thirty three then the next one is additional benefits under basic accidental death and dismemberment coverage the recess if this were the only page that you were presenting to an eleven year old or a lot of clerk or an attorney or a layman they would reasonably understand that if i don't want to have to read all forty six pages of this policy in order to understand my accidental death benefit is that i would go to page thirty three that it does that you would not have a separate listing for basic accidental death and dismemberment coverage and additional benefits if they had already been covered up on page five so when you then go to page thirty four where they have the chart they list wife both hands and feet and so on as the percent of your amount of insurance now the district court found that in fact the portion  by credential at page eight that you would be on ambiguously directed to that when you see schedule of benefits but there's a problem with that the problem is that in terms of this quote schedule of benefits that is referenced in the table of contents there isn't a schedule of benefits at page five six seven or eight the only place in the policy in which they list citing one i hearing in both ears and so on is at page thirty four so even if you followed prudential's reasoning and you looked at the policy and you said was this the schedule of benefits for accidental death and you went to page five you wouldn't find any of these listed benefits that is the only place that they're found in the policy so the question is is this a coverage gram per cent of your amount of insurance life one hundred percent yes that is coverage right now in terms of taking that coverage grant away what the district court and prevention would have us do is to work backwards in the policy twenty six pages to page eight which is what they rely upon and what it says at the bottom of page is for this purpose only that amount will be the amount as determined above so in other words they don't say the images only the base come out the about is only of the the amount found on page fauth it says it is the amount as determined above for this  back all the way to page five where it said basic coverage it said as described above and there's another important thing in terms of use of the word your amount of benefits that i pay to six and seven that noun phrase in various formulations is used repeatedly to describe how the insured can increase your amount  benefits so your amount of benefits doesn't stay as the basic amount of benefits if you give them the evidence and you submit this application and they approve any increase in quote your amount of benefits and in terms of the case why here in the hyatt case we don't know how long the policy was but we know that the cover page and the exclusion was five pages away in this particular case even a lot clearer or a faster reader it would take an hour or more to go through this policy and the problem that prudential has here is that their suggestion is that page thirty four is overridden by page eight which requires going backwards through the policy twenty six pages and in turn on page eight when they're describing how you calculate the benefit they describe you backwards above which is not normal in terms of what lay people do and so in terms of the context of the policy of as a whole and the placement in format of the disclaimer language the case laws is consistent that even if you have an exclusion that hyatt case the night circuit referred to deceptive repugnancy so one thing that i think in terms of having problems with this policy and having it be hard to read is the fact that the language doesn't appear in the policy and it should of this is prudential this is a multibillion dollar insurance carrier and had that been in the policy i would agree with the district court that that was unambiguous the district court misread it what the policy said was four per for this purpose only that amount will be calculated as above and as above included both the optional and the  basic i'd like to see the rest of my time for  the court my name is amanda son of one and i'm here on behalf of potential counsel spoke a lot about the policy in roger a lot of different provisions in the policy the one piece he didn't read to you was the part that appears on page eight that unequivocal very first statement as to what those benefits are stated states the amount for which are insured under the basic employee term life coverage which is precisely the amount of potential paid out here in order to give the case context i think it's important to understand how we got here potential file this matter which generally and that's why you see that we are the plaintiff as an interpreter action because there are does was a dispute between the employer plan sponsor and the counter defend our counterpoint if a poem in this case about who was entitle to the benefits and so potentially brought the case in court to have that decided whether or not the employer was entitle to the benefits or the appellant here in the course of that percent was apparently resolve that issue has importantly and to that exact point at no point in time to dot employer claim that what they had contracts with prudential remember this is a nervous a plan so the into t that created the plan document that purchased the coverage for its employees which means from various has been never paid for any part of it was part of his employee benefits that entity that paid for that coverage never made the argument that the opponent is making here they sought these benefits they applied for them they said they were the rightful recipient and beneath the beneficiary under they the policy potential properly paid mr berry the three hundred seventy five thousand dollars that is due under the ada and the coverage in addition to the three hundred seventy five thousand that is due under the basic term life and the six hundred twenty five that is due under the optional coverage of this isn't a circumstance where we are arguing there is an exclusion oftentimes if an insurer is appearing before you there may be a dispute about whether or not a certain loss or coverage is covered by an indian housey that is not the circumstance the question before you answer on a correctly identified is what is the coverage that was provided and without question the scheduled benefits leaves no question that the coverage that was provided was precisely the amount potential had sought to pay here and which the district court correctly determined was due and making that an court thoroughly reviewed the policy and in fact when looking at the page that the plaintiff a point counterpoint if a poem points to you noted that in the back on page thirty four when it's talking about is the percent of your amount of insurance  frequently and in the briefing in this case he keeps quoting your amount of insurance leaving off in their doctor word which is percent of your amount of insurance that language that's quoted is there is intended to identify how much coverage you get for a particular type of injury if you receive one hundred percent of the a d n d benefit if you lose speech or lose sight of it i use a different percentage it's not in fact intended to identify the coverage that is due which is described earlier in the policy the court correctly determined that there's no question even if you start at the beginning of the policy and you work way through that the only definition that is provided for what coverages do under the ada indeed is that section that i previously described on page eight where it clearly and unambiguously states that your policy coverage insurances this is a typical risk life insurance benefit where it's tied to the amount of of earnings that a particular employer and so for example for everyone who's an employer franklin templeton life they they don't spell out what your particular salary is it may change from year to year but they articulate the way that you go about calculating what your coverage is there and that's precisely what we paid out here what potential heads admitted there is june is precisely the amount that is calculated pursuant to that basic term live coverage  and again the employer in city that contract with credential to provide this policy who was a party to this proceeding never argued that anything more was due even though they were trying to lay claim to things so if you look back and consider the fact this is a nervous a plan and those benefits are provided and negotiated by the employer for purposes of providing to an employee it's important to remember this is an arrest of five zero to a one p k so a case that's a breach of contract case this isn't a case where we're looking to equitable issues or other things that often maybe come would be a case where a fairly sophisticated and today he the employer was purchasing the policy and not some layman correct this is not an individual life insurance case where i would go to a broker and purchase life insurance on   the difference between the purchaser of insurance both to be individual and be there with coverage organisation no your honor in fact there are no other cases that talk about this kind of issue that's specifically addressed in this case which is why i think counsel's searching early looking to case law from a long time ago it's a fairly unique issue that's being presented to you here today in terms of the argument that's being made by the plaintiff many times when you're arguing for coverage or arguing about the covered here were arguing about the precise terms of the contract itself and in the height case if you look at that as as counsel acknowledged on the face of that policy it was stamped the words double indemnity there's nothing in this policy anywhere that speaks to in fact there's nothing in the policy that states that the value of an a d n d policy will be both the optional term life plus the basic like those words turn out appear anywhere in the in the contract in fact the only terms that appear that speak to to the next page and we paid about it's only when you turn to page eight that suddenly he argues there's no ambiguity but in fact without question the language is clear and unambiguous on its face that what we have at the greed to pay is the basic term live coverage that is what the employer negotiated with us to provide deference to counsel that is not the law the ninth circuit has never held that a reciprocal of season are not subject to exactly the same standard of ambiguity from the perspective option of buying into this plan and pretax money is put towards it her statement under risk that the employees don't have any skin in the game is completely false it isn't optional benefit that you pay for and in this particular case not only is it an optional benefit but it started off as a basic benefit and they take x amount of dollars out of your salary or you can get increases so the idea that there isn't a relationship with the ultimate beneficiaries in terms of how this works under arrest is inaccurate what counsel would do is have you go to page eight of the policy and app page  page eight know the table of contents directs us basic accidental death and dismemberment coverage page thirty three if it doesn't direct the insured to page eight and when we get to page thirty three we go to the chart percent of your amount of insurance and by the time you got into this part of the policy we started with the basic three hundred twenty five thousand dollar policy and the insured has now purchased more and she would have you with me when the people of contents is directing you to page thirty three go to page eight why why would an insurer do that if the insurer goes to the table of contents and what she doesn't dispute is this is this is an additional benefit this is accidental death if you die you can your basic benefit then the benefit amount payable under accidental death go and here in the us and their life well what extra stuff do i get if there's an accident percent of your amount of insurance not basic insurance not a portion of it life one hundred so the problem here is that there are two large captioned areas both of which are label basic accidental death and dismemberment coverage she's relying upon page eight but that isn't where the insured is directed in the table of contents and what she didn't explain in her argument was it does say an amount equal to the amount which you are inserted under the basic term life coverage but she doesn't explain why the next sentence is in them for this purpose only that amount will be the amount as determined above what's determined above is both the basic and the optional partridge and what's immediately above is the optional coverage it could have been very easily written to say it's the amount of the basic coverage period and so in terms of this particular policy where we're reading this is in the record at three hundred it's pa as determined above they don't say as determined on page five they say as determined above and what's determined above if you go to page six and seven is repeated references to your amount of insurance which is the extended coverage the optional coverage beyond the basic and determine your amount of insurance as they talk about extending it if you request page seven you must give evidence of ensure good insurability the amount of your insurance will be increased so what they're talking about here is a process by which the amount of your insurance is increased and that term is used six different times on pages six and seven so the question here is not in isolation does she have language that if it were read by itself would exclude coverage the question is are there internal inconsistency here and under the standard of a rest stop under the peterson case where this has to be understandable to a layman and i remember the purpose of a recess arista was designed to be more protective of do we know what the scription instead of instead of talking about a fiction about the the insured in this context reading the policy i have insurance through the government i don't never read what the polic says instead of talking about it in terms of this hypothetical that's probably fictional as well we know what the employee who was presumably paying for this was actually  that the argument that the negotiations between the carrier and the employer and that therefore the insurers don't have to have an understandable document is true it's their money their money even though it's the employer that is paying it comes out of their paycheck so the point is that at some point maybe he should have read it and even if he didn't read it whether he did or not if the carrier does not unambiguous fully exclude the coverage because he had paid for the policy that's on them and in terms of all of the case law about not only having a conspicuous plane in clear but also understandable that's the pop policy behind it the policy is that