Court Opinion

ID: 9541475
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:25:50.035589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:57.239244
License: Public Domain

ELLETT, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
The plaintiff claimed that he was totally and permanently disabled under the terms, of the policies written by the defendants-After making some periodic payments, the defendants denied any liability to make further payments on the grounds that if the plaintiff had any disability, it was not related to causes covered in the policies.
By rendering its verdict in favor of the plaintiff, the jury found that plaintiff was permanently and totally disabled under the terms of the policies. There was evidence to support the verdict and, therefore, the issue of the permanency and totality of the disability under the policies has been concluded, and the prevailing opinion accepts these facts.
*219While the majority of cases listed in the digests have held that recovery in actions involving health and accident policies is limited to accrued and past-dne installments, there is respectable and, in my opinion, better reasoned authority to the contrary.6
In those actions which have been brought to interpret, apply, or enforce the terms of a policy and where no repudiation of further liability is involved, then the recovery is properly limited to accrued and past-due installments. However, where there is a repudiation of all contractual obligations, I think it is the better policy to allow full recovery in one action, as was done in the case now before us.
Some of the cases which limit recovery to past-due installments do so because of a provision in the policy requiring the insured to furnish proof of continued disability as a condition of liability to pay. This should not be necessary where there has been a determination in court that the disability is total and permanent.
It does not appeal to me as being just or fair to permit an insurer which has breached its contractual obligation to pay, to insist that the insured must abide by the terms of the contract insofar as those terms favor the insurer. One who abrogates his ■contract is in no position to compel the other party to be bound by the terms of the contract.
Some of the cases which limit recovery to past-due installments do so upon the ground that to permit a recovery beyond the installments as set out in the contract would be in abrogation of the express provisions of the contract.
Such a holding confuses a suit for specific performance with an action in damages for breach of contract.
At common law an action of Debt would lie for money due under a contract, but only one cause could be brought on the contract. Where a contract was to be performed in installments, an action could not be maintained until all installments were due. The action of Assumpsit changed the law so that recovery could be had as soon as there had been a nonperformance of any installment obligation. However, the idea that only one action would lie for breach of a contract still persisted, and so a plaintiff had to recover all damages in one action, including installments not yet due. He got judgment for the total amount promised when there was a breach of the one installment of the contract.
Later on in the process of development of the law, installment contracts came to be regarded as divisible into separate parts, and thus an action of Indebitatus Assump-sit (he promised to pay) would lie upon *220each installment as it became due. See Corbin on Contracts, § 949.
In the case of Federal Life Ins. Co. v. Rascoe, 12 F.2d 693 (C.C.A.6th, 1926), (cert. den. 273 U.S. 722, 47 S.Ct. 112, 71 L.Ed. 859), it was held that “if there has been an actual breach, coupled with repudiation, of this one contract, then, to avoid a multiplicity of suits, public policy requires that plaintiff may maintain but one action for the entire damages occasioned by such breach.”
While certiorari was refused in this case, it has been disapproved in two subsequent cases by the United States Supreme Court, on the ground that the failure to pay several installments when due was not enlarged into a total breach by a declaration that the policy had lapsed.
In one of these two cases, Mobley v. N. Y. Life Ins. Co., 295 U.S. 632, 55 S.Ct. 876, 79 L.Ed. 1621, the plaintiff had submitted to a physical examination pursuant to the policy after the dispute had arisen as to his disability. He filed his action the next day and before the defendant had had an opportunity to know the results of the examination. The Supreme Court affirmed the trial court in holding that there was no repudiation of the contract.
The other case was that of N. Y. Life Ins. Co. v. Viglas, 297 U.S. 672, 56 S.Ct. 615, 80 L.Ed. 971. This case went up on a demurrer, and the Supreme Court held' that the complaint had not alleged that the insurer had disclaimed the intention or the duty to shape its conduct in accordance with the provisions of the contract. After holding that there was not stated a cause for repudiation, the Court said: “What the damages would be if there had been complete repudiation we do not now decide.”
In Yarbrough v. General Am. Life Ins. Co., 241 F.Supp. 448, 454 (1965), it was. held that “where an insurer repudiates its contractual obligations, * * * by refusing to comply with the terms thereof * * * or by manifesting an intent not to perform an obligation * * * established to be due or to become due in the future, an insured entitled to disability payments is not limited in his recovery to installments which have accrued * * * but may recover in addition to such installments the present value of future installments which will fall due under the policy, calculated with reference to the insured’s life expectancy.”
In the case of Continental Casualty Co. v. Vaughn, 407 S.W.2d 818 (Tex.Civ.App.1966), it was held that the contention of an insurer to the effect that the injury to insured was not an accidental injury supported a finding that such denial of liability was made without just cause, and that the insurer had committed an anticipatory breach which thus permitted a *221recovery of damages measured by the present value of unmatured installments.
The case of Indiana Life Endowment Co. v. Reed, 54 Ind.App. 450, 103 N.E. 77, 80 (1913), stated:
* * * A denial of all liability, where liability has attached, is held to give the injured party the right to treat the contract as broken or repudiated and to pursue his remedy for damages for the breach and to recover, once for all, in a single suit all that may ultimately be due him.
Other cases supporting this rule are Equitable Life Assurance Soc. of U. S. v. Pool, 189 Ark. 101, 71 S.W.2d 455 (1934) ; Travelers Ins. Co. v. Lancaster, 51 Ga.App. 390, 180 S.E. 641 (1935); Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Phifer, 160 Ark. 98, 254 S.W. 335 (1923).
There can be no quarrel with the rule that where the contract has become wholly unilateral, as where nothing further is to be done by the plaintiff, the mere failure to pay one or more installments when due would not, in and of itself, be considered a repudiation of the contract as to future payments, since the breach does not go to the essence of the contract. However, where there is a failure to pay one installment, coupled with an announcement by the insurer that no future payments will be made, then damages for the partly anticipatory breach should be allowed. See Corbin on Contracts, Sec. 966.
Since the plaintiff in this case was determined to be totally and permanently disabled, the defendants cannot relitigate those matters. By assuming the defendants would pay according to the contract, the prevailing opinion ignores the fact that the plaintiff sued for damages, not specific performance, and would compel him to abide by terms of the contract when neither party requests such a ruling. The decision grants to the defendants an opportunity to refuse again to pay the installments to plaintiff and says that in such an event the trial court “should be able- to fashion such relief as will compel performance.” I am unable to know just what relief the decision has in mind. Under the pleadings as framed in this case, the relief to which plaintiff was entitled has already been given him.
If it appears, as in this case, that a party to a contract makes an outright refusal to comply with the terms thereof and so notifies the other party, then I can see no legal reason why that other party may not accept the anticipatory breach of the contract and sue for his damages. What reason is there in law or good conscience to give a locus penitentiae to the party whose wrongful conduct precipitates a lawsuit ? Why should an appellate court set the stage for further litigation when the matters, have already been fully determined?
By informing the plaintiff herein that no-further payments would be made upon the *222policies, the defendants were guilty of an executory breach of the contracts which entitled the plaintiff to sue for his damages and to put an end to further litigation.
I would affirm the judgment of the trial court and in so doing would ignore the dictum in the case of Colovos v. Home Life Ins. Co. of New York, 83 Utah 401, 412, 28 P.2d 607 (1934).

. See annotations in 81 A.L.R. 379 and 99 A.L.R.. 1171.