Opinion ID: 202671
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Purchase and Sale Agreement

Text: 41 Appellants also contend for the first time, in opposition to SunAmerica's summary judgment motion, that the Purchase and Sale Agreement through which SunAmerica had acquired the Silverman policy contained a provision, entitled Modified COI Scale, which provided that [m]ortality charges may be changed on the policy anniversary beginning 15 months after the Rehabilitation Period Termination Date [ viz., on May 1, 2001], Purchase and Sales Agreement § 4.18.1, and that SunAmerica had violated this provision by increasing COI rates in 1999, 2000, and 2001. SunAmerica responds that the terms COI Scale and COI Rate are not equivalent, and that it did not increase the COI scale before May 1, 2001: 42 [T]he plaintiff confuses the scale with the rate. The scale is, if you think of it as a staircase, we agree to keep the staircase in place of what it was costing for a thousand dollars of insurance, but in a variable life policy, or the whole [life] policy, you go up the stairs as you grow older and the cost of insurance increases. 43 Whatever vagueness one arguably might perceive in SunAmerica's explanation of the distinction between mortality charges and COI rates, 8 it is sufficient to note that it was incumbent on appellants, as the parties with the ultimate burden to prove breach of contract at trial, to adduce specific facts, in suitable evidentiary form, to establish the presence of a trialworthy issue. Clifford, 449 F.3d at 280. For example, appellants might have adduced an affidavit from an insurance actuary attesting to the essential equivalence between the terms mortality charges and COI rates. Indeed, the district court expressly noted that, if appellants could prove that, within the 15-month period, SunAmerica had changed the mortality tables, that would constitute a breach. On appeal, however, appellants make no such attempt, merely reiterating instead that SunAmerica breached § 4.18.1 by raising its COI rates from 1999-2001.