Court Opinion

ID: 9445931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:41:24.545856+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:27.399766
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The plaintiff testified that before he left Amarillo on January 4, 1955, he went to Mr. Stroup, representative of the Travelers Insurance Company, and received his assurance as follows:
“A. Well, I told him I got laid off out here and I was going back to Houston and go to a doctor down there and he told me it would be all right to go to my doctor down there and he would take care of it, the whole works; he would send the claim to the Accident Board in Austin and everything.”
According to plaintiff’s testimony, so far uncontradicted, after the six month limitation period had expired he wrote to Travelers pressing his claim, and thereafter Travelers sent a representative to discuss the claim with him. There was nothing to make him suspect that his claim had not been filed in accordance with Stroup’s promise until about February 5, 1956, when he went to see a lawyer. Three days later the claim was filed. In a similar situation, a sixteen day delay in filing the claim has been held excusable. Texas Employees’ Insurance Association v. Hudgins, Tex.Civ.App., 294 S.W.2d 446.
If the jury believed that Travelers’ representative promised to file the claim and that plaintiff reasonably believed in good faith, from all of the negotiations, facts and circumstances known to him, that the claim had been filed within the six month period and such belief continued until within three days before the claim was actually filed, then, I would think that the jury could properly find “good cause” for failure to file the claim earlier. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.