Court Opinion

ID: 9654061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:04:47.284684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:05.588427
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
• We endeavored in our original • opinion, apparently without complete success, .to make clear that the cases first therein cited, Wann v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co.; Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Worton; Metropolitan Life Ins. Co.’ v. Barela, were cited only in support of the proposition that the certificate is an integral and indivisible part of the entire contract, and not as supporting our conclusion that the certificate was primary rather than secondary evidence of the contents of the group policies and of the entire contract. The latter conclusion, we think, necessarily follows upon the established principle in support of which the cases were cited. We are unable to see how the certificate can be an integral and indivisible part of the entire contract, and at the same time be other than primary evidence, to the full extent its terms and provisions suffice for the purpose, of the terms of the entire contract, including the terms of the group policies themselves. Neither the fact that the group policies are the basis of the insurer’s liability, Sanders v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 146 Tex. 169, 205 S.W.2d 43, 46, 173 A.L.R. 968, or are the “primary basis” of the certificate, Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Worton, supra, 70 S.W.2d 216, nor the fact that in the event of a conflict, the terms of the group policies would control and prevail over the terms of the certificate, militate against the foregoing conclusions. We are here concerned only with a question of evidence, not with the matter of construing the entire contract.
In the second group of cases cited in our original opinion, Ramsey v. Wahl, and the cases cited- with it, with the exception of Kottwitz v. Bagby, and Southern Travelers’ Ass’n v. Shattuck, the courts, it is true, were passing upon the sufficiency of the pleadings rather than upon the sufficiency of the proof. However, we think it axiomatic that ordinarily neither more nor less need be pleaded than is required to be proved. The case of Kottwitz v. Bagby, supra, *492is' authority for the proposition that only the material and essential averments of a pleading need be proved; those which are not material and essential need not be proved and may be rejected as surplusage. See, also, 17 C.J.S., Contracts, § 566, page 1199. We know of no rule of law which requires that a contract in its entirety be introduced in evidence as a prerequisite to the establishment of liability under it. On the contrary, we have no doubt, that the person who relies on the contract is the master of his own fate in selecting the portions of the contract he will plead and prove. Of course, when he pleads and proves less than the whole of the contract, he proceeds at the peril of perhaps having the tendered portion of the contract excluded from evir, dence because of a variance between his pleading and proof (assuming the entire contract has been placed before the court by the opposing party, and reflects such variance), or of ultimately being, denied recovery, for failure to prove a cause of action under the entire contract (again assuming it to have been introduced in evidence by the opposing party). Results such as those suggested would follow a showing that under the contract the liability sought to be established is contingent upon conditions precedent, for the burden is upon the plaintiff to both plead and prove compliance with such conditions. However, the conditional nature of liability under the contract must be made apparent before it can avail the defendant. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Bridges, Tex.Civ.App., 5 S.W.2d 244. Therefore, if, by selective pleading and proof of parts only of a contract, a plaintiff should establish a positive duty on the part of the defendant, a breach of that duty, and damage resulting from the breach, and should recover judgment on such a showing,' the mere fact that he had not introduced the entire contract and thereby displayed that the defendant’s duty was conditional rather than positive would not, in our opin- ' ion, be grounds for setting aside the judgment. If the plaintiff should pursue such tactics, it would be up to the defendant to protect himself by making the true facts appear. This could be done by the defendant at whatever stage of the proceedings the protection of his rights dictated; it would entail no shift in the burden of either pleading or proof. For these reasons, we think it was not incumbent on the plaintiff to make proof of the group policy in its entirety; it was sufficient that he prove only so much of it as was necessary to demonstrate the validity of the cause of action he asserted. This, we think he did by introducing in evidence the certificate which contained the provisions of the group policy on which he relied.
Our conclusion that only so much of a contract or policy of insurance as is relied on need be introduced in evidence is inferentially supported by language appearing in Southern Travelers’ Ass’n v. Shattuck, Tex.Civ.App., 2 S.W.2d 568, 571, writ refused. The by-laws of the Association were in that instance a part of the contract, and the court expressed itself to the following effect : “The certificate of membership issued to the insured does not purport to contain in itself and without reference to any other formal instrument any of the substantive terms of the contract of insurance. * * * Merely proving the certificate of membership and death of insured did not give the appellee any cause of action whatever. In order to establish a cause of action of any sort, she was compelled to prove a portion of the by-laws.” (Emphasis supplied.) If the rule were otherwise, it would frequently be necessary to greatly encumber the record with wholly immaterial matter. For example, it would probably be necessary in .a case such as the one at bar to introduce the group policy providing for death benefits, when no claim at all is being, or could be, asserted under it. The mere suggestion of such a possibility should suffice to demonstrate that the law imposes no such obligation.
As pointed out in our original opinion the certificate involved in the case of Wann v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 41 S.W.2d 50, 52, did not purport to contain any of the provisions of the group policy. It was construed as merely evidencing the insured’s “right to participate in the insurance provided by his employer under the terms and conditions imposed in the group policy when *493construed in connection with the certificate.” The court then pointed out that “the terms of the certificate may have been materially modified by stipulations contained in the group policy.” The ■ certificate involved in the case at bar does more than merely evidence the insured’s right to participate in the insurance provided by his employer; it sets out sufficient of the stipulations of the group policy to establish plaintiff’s right to recover under it in the absence of proof of some other provision of the policy that would defeat his right. If the policy contains any provision that would defeat his right of recovery, the-plaintiff was under no legal duty in this instance of proving it.
Being of the opinion the case was correctly disposed of upon original subtiiission, the appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.