Court Opinion

ID: 9451359
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:14:56.357896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:40.899467
License: Public Domain

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur in the result Judges Gibson and Vogel reach but I arrive at that result by falling back upon the axiom, noted but not actually used by the majority, that doubt in a contract of this kind is to be resolved against the insurer. I say this because I am not certain, as the majority appears to be, that the “effective date of the contract” was October 31, 1960. It seems to me that when one views the application and the conditional receipt in their entirety, a strong argument emerges that the effective date of the policy is the date of the required medical examination (which this record shows took place on September 21, 1960, but was supplemented by a requested urinalysis).
Had Mr. Beister died on October 28, before the formal home office acceptance of October 31, but after the completion of the medical examination, I suspect these plaintiffs would still be asserting coverage. If so, I would be hard put to deny it to them. See Gaunt v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 160 F.2d 599 (2 Cir. 1947), cert. denied 331 U.S. 849. And I hope that the majority opinion, with its stress upon the formal acceptance date, does not stand as authority opposing the result reached by Judge Hand in Gaunt.
This does not mean that I am fully persuaded that the medical examination date is the vital one. I merely emphasize that a number of the points so effectively made by the majority against the selected predate of June 13 have no application at all against the medical examination date. In this respect, I feel the insurer substantially weakened its position when it chose to base its case on June 13.
For me, any decision made, as it must be here, on such a confusingly phrased conditional receipt as this one, is bound to possess its logical difficulties. For example, what is the significance of the phrase, in the third paragraph of the conditional receipt, relating to the continuance of insurance only for a “proportionate part of said interval payment” (in this case, 32 days), a phrase not explained away in the majority opinion. But even that phrase is not without its ambiguity. It is not clear from what date the interval is measured; neither is it apparent what coverage exists if the pro rata period were to exceed 60 days.
The problem is akin to those distressingly difficult ones which emerge from a poorly drawn will. With the receipt here drawn by the insurer, however, we have the axiom to fall back upon. That is where I find myself and, using its convenient presence, I concur in the result.