Court Opinion

ID: 9444468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:01:54.779585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:52.976351
License: Public Domain

DOBIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I feel compelled to dissent. The plaintiff, it seems to me, is on the horns of a painful dilemma. The plaintiff, in order to recover, must prove that George Skinner, the insured, died before May 1,1944, when the policy lapsed. I think the evidence here was too slender to require the submission of this question to the jury and that judgment should have been entered in favor of the United States, defendant.
The insured was last seen by his family on March 20, 1944. His threats to kill *351himself are of the type often made, but seldom carried out, by soldiers ordered to embark overseas. He did not even make unconditional threats to kill himself ; but he threatened only to kill himself before he would go overseas. My guess is that he avoided both going overseas and death by deserting and then by disappearing to avoid a conviction for the serious offense of desertion from the armed forces of the United States. No body was ever found. Nor was there any direct evidence of when, where and how he was supposed to die.
If we assume that he did die before May 1, 1944, when his policy lapsed, then I think the statute of limitations bars any recovery. If the presumption of death from seven years absence be invoked, then the Statute expressly provides that death is presumed to occur “as of the date of the expiration of such period”. I cannot add the presumption of death under the Statute to the slender evidence of actual death before the lapse of the policy to justify a recovery here.