Court Opinion

ID: 9791296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:08:36.893522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.249257
License: Public Domain

Mowbray, J.,
dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent.
Appellant’s husband, now deceased, purchased from respondent insurance company a $50,000.00 policy on his life naming his wife, the appellant, as beneficiary. The husband died of cancer. The company has refused to pay the widow the $50,000.00 on the grounds that the husband, when checking the application forms at the time the policy was issued, checked the “no” box rather than the “yes” box when responding to an inquiry whether he had ever been treated for hypertension.
Although when the husband obtained the policy he had the pulse and blood pressure of a “high school athlete,” the company learned after the husband’s death that he had earlier been treated for hypertension. There was no showing, relation or connection that hypertension caused the husband’s death. In the absence of some relation, connection or causation, I believe that the com*377pany should honor its agreement and pay the $50,000.00 due the widow under the policy. The company was willing to accept his premiums, and only when he died did they raise the issue of hypertension, which had nothing to do with his death from the catastrophic cancer.
Therefore, I would reverse and remand the case to the district court with instructions to enter judgment for the appellant with costs and attorney’s fees.1

Moreover, as former Assemblyman John C. Homer stated during the third reading of the bill leading to the enactment of NRS 687B.110, “[t]his bill was to protect the consumer.” Hearing on A.B. 416, Fifty-sixth Session, 1971, Journal of the Assembly, p. 957.