Court Opinion

ID: 9833562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:50:02.328741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:04.342159
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
It is apparent that we failed to make the original opinion clear, or at least counsel for appellee misapprehends the holdings' in the opinion. Appellants motion for rehearing is *623based upon tbe assumption that the reversal rests upon the doctrine of waiver. The ease turns upon the question of notice, however, and not of waiver, which is not in the case at all. We simply held that under the conceded facts the society had no actual notice of the alleged assignment of the certificate by Mrs. Wright to Shattuck, and that under a valid stipulation, in the certificate- the knowledge of the assignment obtained by the clerk of the local camp at Austin could not be imputed to the society; that being ignorant of the assignment to Shattuck the society properly paid over the insurance to Mrs. Wright, the beneficiary named in the certificate. Why should the society divert the proceeds of the insurance from the insured’s widow, who was the designated beneficiary, and pay it over to Shattuck, a complete stranger?
Appellee insists that the local clerk was the agent of the society in paying out the insurance money, and that therefore notice to him, an agent to whom the disbursement of the fund had been entrusted, was imputed to the society, as in ordinary cases of principal and agent. But the premise laid down is not the premise made by' the record. The clerk of the local camp was not such agent. He did not handle or pay out the money and had no control over its disbursement. The head office of the society, domiciled in a distant state, simply sent to him a voucher for the amount of the certificate, payable to Mrs. Wright, with instructions to deliver it. His authority in the transaction was no more than that of an automaton, to wit, to deliver the voucher to the payee named therein, Mrs. Wright. He did this, and Mrs. Wright forwarded this evidence of the debt through the banks, which collected it and forwarded the proceeds to Mrs. Wright. Even if under the general rules of agency this purely mechanical connection with the transaction served to clothe the clerk of the local camp with the apparent authority appellee attributes to him, the plain provisions of the certificate and of the society’s by-laws expressly deprived him of such authority.
But appellee contends most earnestly that this stipulation was intended to govern the members of the society, “and the members only,” and were “not intended in the slightest manner to apply to a stranger or person not a member of the society,” and that he, a stranger, could not be bound by this stipulation against the local clerk’s authority. We think, however, that when he purchased the certificate he necessarily took it with all its expressed limitations, and that the stipulation operated against him just as effectually as it did against his assignor, the beneficiary, into whose shoes he claims to have stepped. The record warrants the conclusion that -he or his attorneys had actual knowledge of the provisions of the certificate, but that is neither here nor there, since he will certainly be charged with knowledge of the contents of the very contract he purchased and now seeks to enforce in this suit.
We have made this brief explanation in deference to the earnest appeal of counsel on motion for rehearing, which is overruled.