Court Opinion

ID: 9446139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:47:23.969076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:32.575113
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
I agree that the judgment should be reversed, but I do not agree with all that is said in the opinion. The first one of the “Exclusions” provided in part that: “This policy does not apply * * * while the automobile is * * * used for carrying persons for charge * * * unless such use is specifically declared and described in this policy and premium charged therefor.” Admittedly, a specific declaration meeting the requirement of that exclusion clause is contained in Paragraph 2 (a) of the “Funeral Director Endorsement”; viz.:
“2. While the automobile is used (a) for passenger-carrying purposes incidental to the named insured’s business as funeral director, but not otherwise for the carrying of persons for a consideration * * *.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Considering the italicized phrase, upon which this case turns, I think that the words “as funeral director” modify the expression “the named insured’s business.” Even so, it seems to me that, if the case were developed by evidence, it is possible that a jury might properly have concluded that the use of the automobile when the accident occurred was “incidental to the named insured’s business as funeral director.” That question, I think, necessarily involves a factual decision.
In the federal courts, under our present liberal rules, a plaintiff is entitled to have his case tried on the proofs rather than the pleadings unless it appears to a certainty that he would be entitled to no relief under any state of facts which could be proved in support of his claim. Des Isles v. Evans, 5 Cir., 1952, 200 F.2d 614, 615, 616, and authorities there collected. Further, the only grounds upon which averments of the complaint can be stricken are that such averments are “redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous.” Rule 12(f), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. Professor Moore points out that: “Motions to strike alleged redundant, immaterial, impertinent or scandalous matter are not favored. Matter will not be stricken from a pleading unless it is clear that it can have no possible bearing upon the subject matter of the litigation.” 2 Moore’s Federal Practice, 2nd ed., Paragraph 12.21 [2], p. 2317. I think that the district court erred in striking paragraph 8 of the amended complaint, and especially the following part thereof:
*573“At the time the aforesaid insurance policy was issued and prior thereto, there was and has been for a long time a custom and usage among funeral directors in the general vicinity of St. Augustine, Florida, and elsewhere, including the plaintiff, to use regular passenger carrying motor vehicles for the purpose of transporting and carrying persons to and from hospitals and other similar institutions, and plaintiff further alleges that plaintiff and other funeral directors in said vicinity generally use such vehicles for such purposes as a part of and incidental to the business of funeral directors, all of which was actually known to the defendant by and through its agent, G. R. Wiles aforesaid * *
Evidence to sustain those averments would have been admissible, I think, not to vary the terms of the insurance policy, but to show what the parties understood to be, and what was in fact, incidental to the named insured’s business as funeral director. If substantial evidence supported those averments, and tended further to show that the trip claimed to be covered by the policy was begun with the purpose on plaintiff’s part to return Mr. Roy, a patient in a mental institution, from Jacksonville to St. Augustine, then I think that a jury might properly have decided the issue with the plaintiff. I think that the question of whether the automobile was being used as an incident to this particular insured’s business as funeral director should not be decided on the pleadings alone; and I, therefore, concur specially.