Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/302/628/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 04:51:05+00:00

Document:
"All public laws granting medical or hospital treatment, domiciliary care, compensation, and other allowances, pension, disability allowance, or retirement pay to veterans and the dependents of veterans of . . . the World War, . . . are hereby repealed, and all laws granting or pertaining to yearly renewable term insurance are hereby repealed. . . ."
repeal "automatic insurance" granted by § 401 of the War Risk Insurance Act, as amended, in the case of soldiers of the World War who died or became permanently disabled without having applied for insurance within 120 days after entrance into or employment in active service. P. 302 U. S. 631.
Certiorari, post, p. 673, to review the affirmance of a recovery of "automatic insurance" in a suit in behalf of an infant whose father had been drafted into the military service in April, 1918, and had died two weeks later without having applied for War Risk insurance.
The question is whether the Economy Act [Footnote 1] repealed section 401 of the War Risk Insurance Act, [Footnote 2] and thereby deprived veterans and their beneficiaries of "automatic insurance."
During the World War, it was the policy of the government to allow soldiers one hundred and twenty days after enlistment or drafting within which to apply for and purchase insurance. For this period, it was intended that they be protected as though they had bought government insurance. In furtherance of this policy, Congress provided that all veterans who died or became totally and permanently disabled within one hundred and twenty days after their entrance into active service should be automatically "deemed to have applied for and to have been granted insurance."
It is here contended that the words of the Economy Act repealing "other allowances" and "laws . . . pertaining to yearly renewable term insurance" are broad enough to include a repeal of automatic insurance. With this contention we cannot agree.
"medical or hospital treatment, domiciliary care, compensation and other allowances, pension, disability allowance, . . . retirement pay . . . and all laws granting or pertaining to yearly renewable term insurance,"
Congress did not include "automatic insurance" in this detailed list of benefits repealed.
but to protection for soldiers who never had and never could obtain yearly renewable term insurance.
It is to be remembered that automatic insurance applied to that particular group of American soldiers who either were killed, died, or became wholly or permanently incapacitated before they had a reasonable opportunity to obtain insurance of any kind. It may be that Congress did not believe it proper to economize at the expense of those veterans who came out of the army with health completely destroyed or to the detriment of the beneficiaries of soldiers who lost their lives in service without a reasonable opportunity to apply for insurance.
"All public laws granting medical or hospital treatment, domiciliary care, compensation and other allowances, pension, disability allowance, or retirement pay to veterans and the dependents of veterans of . . . the World War . . . are hereby repealed, and all laws granting or pertaining to yearly renewable term insurance are hereby repealed, but payments in accordance with such laws shall continue to the 1st day of the third calendar month following the month during which this Act is enacted."
"Any person in the active service on or after the 6th day of April, 1917, and before the 11th day of November, 1918, who, while in such service, and before the expiration of one hundred and twenty days after October 15, 1917, or one hundred and twenty days after entrance into or employment in the active service, becomes or has become totally and permanently disabled, or dies or has died, without having applied for insurance shall be deemed to have applied for and to have been granted insurance, payable to such person during his life in monthly installments of $25 each. . . . If he shall die either before he shall have received any of such monthly installments or before he shall have received two hundred and forty of such monthly installments, then $25 per month shall be paid to . . . his child . . . Provided, however, That no more than two hundred and forty of such monthly installments . . . shall be so paid."
United States v. Yuginovich, 256 U. S. 450; United States v. Noce, 268 U. S. 613; see Cope v. Cope, 137 U. S. 682.
See, as to meaning of "allowances," Jones v. United States, 60 Ct.Cls. 552, 567; United States v. Landers, 92 U. S. 77.
"That, subject to such regulations as the President may prescribe, allowances may be granted for burial and funeral expenses and transportation of the bodies (including preparation of the bodies) of deceased veterans of any war to the places of burial thereof in a sum not to exceed $107 in any one case."
Rosencrans v. United States, 165 U. S. 257.
Cf. United States v. Greathouse, 166 U. S. 601.
Cf. Washington v. Miller, 235 U. S. 422, 235 U. S. 428; see also Posadas v. National City Bank, 296 U. S. 497, 296 U. S. 503 et seq.

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