Court Opinion

ID: 9673955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:21:10.194647+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:24.989343
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, J., dissenting. It seems to me that the effect of this decision is to deny to the insurer its undoubted power to cancel the policy upon five days’ notice. For had the notice been addressed to the insured at Eudora I have no doubt that the majority would have held (and I would have agreed) that such a procedure would not have been a strict compliance with the terms of the policy. The policy required that notice be sent to the insured “at the address shown in this policy.” Here the insured had not requested the insurer to change her address on its records; all that happened was that her husband asked for a change of his club membership to Arkansas. There would certainly have been a valid reason for Mrs. Scott to want notices to be sent to her husband’s business address until the couple reached Eudora, as she could have arranged for important mail to be opened in Brooklyn and word sent to her if any action appeared to be necessary. Similar arrangements could not have been made in Eudora, where the Scotts were strangers. Hence it seems plain that the insurer would not have complied strictly with the terms of the policy by officiously choosing to send the notice to an address not named in the policy. It would therefore have been liable. But it now developes that the insurer is also liable for its strict compliance with the terms of the contract, merely because the insured’s husband had asked that his club membership be transferred to Arkansas. I certainly agree with the rule of strict compliance, but I do not think we ought to penalize the insurer when it has done exactly what it agreed to do and would clearly have been liable had it done anything else.' Apparently the only safe course for the insurer in this situation is to send notices to both addresses, even though the contract does not require that procedure. Ward, J., joins in this dissent.