Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/243/331/6417/
Timestamp: 2020-08-09 09:03:24
Document Index: 363624181

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 214', '§ 245', '§ 261', '§ 262', '§ 261', '§ 55', '§ 52']

Anna Bowman and Doris Bowman, Appellants, v. the Home Life Insurance Company of America, a Delaware Corporation, 243 F.2d 331 (3d Cir. 1957) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Third Circuit › 1957 › Anna Bowman and Doris Bowman, Appellants, v. the Home Life Insurance Company of America, a Delaware...
Anna Bowman and Doris Bowman, Appellants, v. the Home Life Insurance Company of America, a Delaware Corporation, 243 F.2d 331 (3d Cir. 1957)
US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit - 243 F.2d 331 (3d Cir. 1957) Argued March 5, 1957
Decided April 16, 1957
Rehearing Denied May 10, 1957
The story of the case, as presented in the evidence on the plaintiffs' behalf, runs something like this. Mrs. Bowman, recently widowed, was called upon by a salesman of the defendant insurance company and induced to sign an application for insurance for herself and a younger son. Her eighteen year old daughter signed a similar application. These applications were duly forwarded to the company and were put into the hands of one Bruno who served as "field underwriter" for his employer. As we understand it from the testimony, the field underwriter is supposed to call upon applicants for insurance and ascertain whether the insurance applied for is an appropriate risk for the company to take. Among other things, he is supposed to complete and verify the medical history of the applicant. In the application for insurance, signed by each plaintiff, there was a statement that the applicant was not "deaf, dumb, blind, ruptured" and so forth. The field underwriter was given the original application cards, which, in addition to the above question, contained some medical history and other information as to an applicant's height, weight, occupation and so on.
There would be no question about Bruno's individual liability. Such a contact as he inflicted upon plaintiffs is one called in the Restatement an "offensive bodily contact."1 The fact that permission for the touching was obtained by fraud vitiates the consent given by the ad hoc patient.2 The question is, however, whether Bruno's conduct in this instance can be attributed to his employer.
The plaintiff has advanced the theory that the company had a duty of protection which was not delegable and for the violation of which it is responsible even though its employee departed from the line of duty. Cf. Restatement, Agency § 214 (1933). The often cited case of Craker v. Chicago & N. W. Ry., 1875, 36 Wis. 657, 17 Am.Rep. 504, is relied upon. We think the argument not in point. There was no such entrusting of the plaintiff's person or property to the company as is found in the relation of railroad passenger and carrier and the suggestion that insurance is a business vested with the public interest does not strengthen the case.
Nor do we think that we get help here from the myriad of cases in which a servant authorized to keep order or use force under some circumstances uses too much force. E. g., Orr v. William J. Burns International Detective Agency, 1940, 337 Pa. 587, 12 A.2d 25; Fletcher v. Central Wrecking Corp., 1936, 124 Pa.Super. 271, 188 A. 612; Restatement, Agency § 245 (1933). Bruno was not authorized to use any force at all.
"§ 261. Agent's Position Enables Him to Deceive.
"A principal who puts an agent in a position that enables the agent, while apparently acting within his authority, to commit a fraud upon third persons is subject to liability to such third persons for the fraud.
"§ 262. Agent Acts for His Own Purposes.
"A person who otherwise would be liable to another for the misrepresentations of one apparently acting for him, under the rule stated in § 261, is not relieved from liability by the fact that the apparent agent acts entirely for his own purposes, unless the other has notice of this."
It is not surprising that the unusual facts of the instant case seem not to have come before the Pennsylvania courts. However, Mr. Justice Maxey quoted section 261 of the Agency Restatement, set out above, with apparent approval in Bachman v. Monte, 1937, 326 Pa. 289, 296, 192 A. 485, 488. A case which seems to us to involve the same problem as ours is Robert Howarth's Sons, Inc., v. Boortsales, 1939, 134 Pa.Super. 320, 3 A.2d 992. This was a case in which an agent slipped in his own name as a co-party to a contract signed in blank and entrusted to him by the principal. The court protected the third party who paid the agent after the principal performed. Judge Stadtfeld speaks of the agent being "armed with the means of perpetrating a fraud." 134 Pa.Super. at page 325, 3 A.2d at page 994. In Keller v. New Jersey Fidelity & Plate Glass Ins. Co., 1932, 306 Pa. 124, 135-136, 159 A. 40, 44, the court lays down the rule that "the principal who gives to the agent absolute power to wrong the community in general, must bear the loss if innocent parties are injured by his exercise of that power."4
In addition, there are numerous cases where the Pennsylvania court speaks of the rule that "`where one of two innocent persons must suffer loss for the fraud of a third, the loss should fall on the one whose act facilitated it.'" This quotation is taken from Ervin v. City of Pittsburgh, 1940, 339 Pa. 241, 256, 14 A.2d 297, 303. A good collection of Pennsylvania decisions using this and similar language is found in the opinon of Judge Arnold in Weiner v. Pennsylvania Co. for Ins. on Lives and Granting Annuities, 1947, 160 Pa.Super. 320, 51 A.2d 385, (note 17).
Commonwealth v. Gregory, 1938, 132 Pa. Super. 507, 1 A.2d 501. Restatement, Torts § 55 and comment b thereto; § 52, comment b (1934).
What the learned justice meant by "absolute" power is not quite clear