Court Opinion

ID: 9697900
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:36:39.645661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:36.835754
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno:
I agree with everything said by Justice Bell in his Dissenting Opinion and would add an additional observation or two in support of our conclusion that the verdict of the jury in this case should be approved and the judgment affirmed.
When the plaintiff, Samuel Easton, and the representative of the involved insurance companies, Everett Young, discussed the matter of insurance on Easton’s lumber, Young quoted the insurance rate of $3.22 on the lumber stored inside Easton’s warehouse and $.99 on the lumber in the yard. Easton indicated that if he could not be given the lower rate on the lumber stored in the basement and sub-basement of his building, he would not purchase insurance. At the time of this discussion Easton had lumber stacked in three places: a quantity valued at $45,000 in basement and sub-basement stalls in his building; another quantity at the railroad siding worth $15,000; and a small, as well as inferior grade, of lumber in a so-called gutter rack or shed by the creek worth not more than $300. Obviously, the most momentous of these items was the $45,000 stock in basement and sub-basement.
When Easton declined to pay the $3.22 rate on the $45,000 stock, Young offered him the outdoor rate provided he would isolate the lumber stalls in his building from the rest of the building so that he could classify their contents as “shed” lumber. Easton accepted this proposition and accordingly built an éxpensivé and for*46midable floor-to-eeiling wall athwart the basement so that at this level the warehouse became in effect two structures. After the wall was built there was no way for one to move from the forward part of the building to the rear portion without passing around on the outside and entering by a door in the rear.
Easton testified: “Q. Well then you understood, from the words that you say he used, if you put that wall up, then your rate in this separated part of the building, as you put it, would come down from what was the rate on the building of $3.22, down to about 50 cents? A. It would come down to the same rate he had given me on the open sheds and yard in Thompson-ville. Q. And you said that was fifty cents? A. Yes, with my dividends. . . . Q.. The tvord shed then was going to mean a part of your building? A. That’s right, the rear of it. Q. It would still be part of the building? A. It was stalls and sheds, correct — the rear of it.*
Young denied this conversation but the jury gave credence to Easton’s testimony.
If the arrangement described by Easton did not take place, the following questions inevitably present themselves :
1. Why would Easton have erected the expensive wall which blocked off all communication between the forward and rear part of his building?
2. Why would he have taken out $60,000 worth'of insurance on the lumber at the railroad siding and the lumber in the gutter rack, the total value of which was only $15,300?
3. If the stalls in the warehouse were not to be regarded as sheds, why would the insurance policies employ the plural word “sheds”, when at the time only *47one structure could classify as shed according to the interpretation given by the defendants?
4. What happens to the testimony, apparently believed by the jury, given by Robert Graham, who said: “There was a sub-cellar down underneath there. What we called the sheds, — we called them sheds.”
Speaking to the subject of sheds, the Majority Opinion says: “The mere fact that the plural ‘sheds’ was used in the present policies when only one such structure existed in 1951 does not create an ambiguity. . . . If a policy of insurance were drawn to cover ‘horses’ and the insured had but one horse at the time, certainly ho such ambiguity would arise as would permit testimony that the policy was meant to cover the insured’s cow as well.”
I doubt that the horse-and-cow illustration is an apt one. ' Webster defines a horse as a “large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous mammal domesticated by man since a prehistoric period and used as a beast of burden or for riding.” Webster defines a cow-as “the mature female of wild or domestic cattle of the genus Bos ■ (ruminant quadrupeds).” There are many differences between a horse and a cow which we should not use valuable paper to delineate, outline, enumerate and describe. Certainly there are not that many differences between a shed as described by the Majority and the basement stalls described by the plaintiffs’ witnesses. Cows and horses have no similarity except that they are both quadrupeds, they have no common feature except that they are equally exploited by man, they have no social resemblance to each other except that they both feel at home in a stall or shed. There is, however, a vast area of similarity between the three-sided enclosures housing the lumber in Easton’s warehouse and the gutter rack enclosure (called a shed) housing lumber in his yard.
*48The Majority Opinion insists that the insurance policies cannot possibly cover the stalls in the warehouse and that they were directed only to the lumber in the open. A high wall obstructs movement along this path of reasoning. When the policies were written, there was, as already mentioned, only one outside shed in existence. Why, then, it is necessary to ask again, did the policies speak of sheds? The Majority Opinion attempts to surmount and pass over this wall by explaining further: “The meaning of the policies is simply that the one existing shed was insured and, further, that any other sheds which might be erected during the life of the policy would also be covered to a total value of |60,000.”
But who says that that is the “meaning of the policies”? The Majority Opinion writer. But how does he know that that is what the contracting parties had in mind? How can he derive that meaning except from extraneous evidence? And if he can reason “shed” from the specific word “sheds,” then he must consider the circumstances surrounding the writing of the policies.
And if the Majority admits that surrounding circumstances must be analyzed and evaluated, then the door has been opened for interpretation of the contract and parole evidence must be considered in arriving at the intention of the parties.
Taking up again the topic of a plural subject matter, let me offer an illustration. If a man has one natural child and one stepchild and takes out insurance on two children, the obvious conclusion would be that he meant to insure the lives of both the natural child and the stepchild. It could not be argued by the insurance company that when the word “children” was used, it was intended to refer only to the natural child and such other natural children as might be procreated in *49the future by the man and his wife. Under such a construction the insurance company could find itself in a serious actuarial predicament if the man and wife were healthy and prolific procreators and capable of bringing into being another dozen offspring. Similarly, would the defendant companies in the case at bar, as the Majority Opinion suggests, have insured blindly all sheds that Easton might have erected after the signing of the contract? Isn’t it more likely, more reasonable and more in keeping with business regularity to assume that the insurance companies contracted to cover what was in existence at the time of the signing of the contract? And wouldn’t that mean the shed in the yard and the stalls in the warehouse which were also referred to as sheds?
There is another question which is not answered by the Majority Opinion. If Easton intended to insure his lumber, and of course he did, why would he restrict the coverage to the least valuable part of his stock- — that which lay exposed to the elements in the yard, — and ignore the treasure in the warehouse stalls? Again, unless we ascribe to Easton a subnormal intelligence which is not evidenced by anything, in the record, why would he pay premiums on $60,000 worth of insurance to cover only $15,000 worth of lumber?
These circumstances and many others covered in the 450 printed pages of testimony give added substance to Brother Beli/s conclusions that (1) there was a latent ambiguity in the policies, (2) parol evidence was admissible to clarify, interpret and resolve the ambiguity, and (3) the construction of the insurance policies in the light of all the evidence and under proper instruction from the Court was a question of fact to be determined by the jury.

 Italics’ throughout, mine.