Court Opinion

ID: 9472269
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:54:42.209524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:50.217616
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The jury returned a verdict in favor of Mrs. Jackson and answered “no” to an interrogatory as to whether “there was a misrepresentation, omission, concealment or incorrect statement made by Jerry A. Jackson in the application for insurance.”
The district court, in denying the motion for judgment n.o.v., recited the facts as follows:
It is undisputed that Agent Hartley had known Jerry Jackson for a number of years and that he was aware that Jackson’s family had a history of heart conditions. There is no question but that, during the course of obtaining the information necessary to complete the application, he was advised of Jackson’s visit to a cardiologist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, some 100 miles away from Jackson’s home, and that an electrocardiogram and stress test had been given and that the results were abnormal. He was advised that Jackson was to return to Tulsa within two or three days to undergo further tests. The jury certainly had a right to conclude that Hartley, defendant's agent of fourteen years, could not stick his head in the sand and disregard all of that evidence in answering question 19b. The jury could have concluded that Jackson gave him all of the information necessary to put him on notice that his problem was not a routine one and was not the result of a routine physical, but that more serious problems must exist. When the knowledge that Hartley had is coupled with his unequivocal testimony that he did not believe that Jerry Jackson lied to him at the time or that he would lie to anyone, there is, in the Court's view, an abundance of evidence from which the jury could have reached the conclusion that it did.
I believe that Hartley’s testimony is important in two respects. First, considering it in the light most favorable to Mrs. Jackson, as we must, and giving it all favorable inferences, Dulin v. Circle F Industries, Inc., 558 F.2d 456, 465 (8th Cir.1977); Marshall v. Humble Oil & Refining Co., 459 F.2d 355, 358-59 (8th Cir.1972), and Dace v. ACF Industries, Inc., 722 F.2d 374, 375 *457(8th Cir.1983), I believe that it is sufficient to support the jury verdict that there was no misrepresentation, concealment or incorrect statement.
Secondly, I believe that the Arkansas law is substantially less unanimous than the court’s opinion today proposes. The district court, in a carefully reasoned opinion, sets forth not only the position expounded by this court in its opinion today, but also refers to a long line of cases which hold that “the knowledge obtained by an insurance agent, even a soliciting agent, in relation to information requested on the application while completing the application is imputed to the insurance company, or that the company is estopped from denying coverage where the agent obtained from the applicant the correct information.” The district court cites some fifteen cases in support of this proposition. Our reading of the relatively simple holding in Reliable Life Ins. Co. v. Elby, 247 Ark. 514, 446 S.W.2d 215, 217 (1969), and the rather extensive opinion in Southern National Ins. Co. v. Heggie, 206 Ark. 196, 174 S.W.2d 931, 934-35 (1943), compels the conclusion that there is substantial authority in Arkansas law to support the holding of the district court. On a question of state law, where there are differing decisions, we should give great weight to the decision of the district court. Bergstrom v. Sambo’s Restaurants, Inc., 687 F.2d 1250, 1255 (8th Cir.1982).
I share the district court’s observation that it probably would not have decided this case the same way that the jury did. Nevertheless, I think there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict, and I cannot find that the district court erred in its conclusion that the knowledge of the agent should be imputed to the company. I would affirm the judgment of the district court.