Court Opinion

ID: 9711602
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:35:08.687606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:06.257610
License: Public Domain

CERCONE, President Judge,
concurring:
I am in thorough agreement with the decision in this case; it correctly sets out the law in Pennsylvania on the questions before us today. I have my reservations, however, about Judge Hoffman’s reliance on Klischer v. Nationwide Ins. Co., 281 Pa.Super. 292, 422 A.2d 175 (1980). In Klischer suit was brought by the decedent’s beneficiary to a life insurance policy following accidental death in an airplane crash. The life insurance policy involved contained a clause excluding the insurer’s liability in the case of injury or death in an *25airplane accident. The plaintiff succeeded in having testimony admitted concerning statements the decedent made about the extent of his insurance coverage. The Klischer panel held that the lower court did not err in admitting this testimony since it violated neither the parol evidence rule nor the evidentiary rules barring hearsay. My concern is over the hearsay question.
Klischer holds that a hearsay declaration by a decedent concerning the extent of his coverage under an insurance contract is admissible to prove circumstantially that the decedent had no knowledge of an exclusionary provision in the contract based on the state of mind exception to the hearsay rules. I think this holding is erroneous. Of the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule, Professor McCormick says the following:
The substantive law often makes legal rights and liabilities hinge upon the existence of a state of mind or emotion in a person involved in the transaction in question. Where this is so, and a legal proceeding arises from the transaction, the pleadings may put in issue such mental state. To ascertain it becomes an ultimate object of search. The intent or ill-will or the like is not sought to be proved as circumstantial evidence of the person’s earlier or later conduct but as an operative fact upon which a cause of action or defense depends. Ascertainment of the state of mind is an end in itself. McCormick on Evidence, 568.
The hearsay was admitted to prove not an operative fact but came in as circumstantial evidence to prove the decedent’s lack of knowledge of the exclusionary provision and consequently, the insurance company’s failure to inform him of the exclusion. Inasmuch as the case before us does not involve such a hearsay question, the majority’s citation of Klischer should not be read as an endorsement of its hearsay analysis. In any event, my reservations as to the Klischer decision should in no way be understood to affect my support for the holding in the instant case.