Court Opinion

ID: 9653416
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:46:31.548835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:59.075020
License: Public Domain

MINTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot agree with the Court’s opinion in this case. That insurance contracts are to he construed most strongly against the insurance company needs the citation of no authority. I do not think that death resulted in the instant case directly or indirectly “from * * * war or any act incident thereto.” I think that the insured met his death as an incident of training for tvar. It would have been simple enough for the defendant to have added to the limiting clause “or an act incident to training for war.” This it did not do. The majority very obligingly supplies it for the defendant, thus expanding the exclusion provision by construction to cover every one in service who is engaged in training.
I quote the majority opinion: “When a person enters the military service of his country which is engaged in war with an enemy country, every act performed in training and preparation for actual combat service under the command of military authority is a necessary and essential part of the war. * * * To say that during this course of preparation he is neither in the war nor performing an ‘act incident thereto’ borders on the preposterous.”
*858This position is far more extreme than the defendant claimed on oral aigument or in its brief. I quote from the brief:
“ * * * the defendant could have written a provision that the Company would not be liable for the double indemnity benefit if a fatal accident resulted directly or indirectly from service in the armed forces in time of peace or in time of war.
“The defendant has never claimed that such were the terms of the double indemnity provisions pertaining to war or an act incident thereto ' * *
When our country is at war, we are all in the war in a broad sense; but we are not all in service.. One who has not completed his training can hardly be said to be engaged in war or any incident thereof. Certainly an incident of training for war •is not the same thing as an incident of war. The provision of the policy should not be construed to include as incidents of war what are only incidents of training for war, unless we are prepared to say all acts incident to training for war are also incident to war. Such a liberal construction of the policy is unwarranted.
Furthermore, I think that we are bound by the law as declared by any court of the State of Illinois, in the absence of more convincing evidence as to what the law is. Fidelity Union Trust Co., et al., Executors v. Field, 311 U.S. 169, 61 S.Ct. 176, 85 L. Ed. 109.
The law in Illinois is best indicated in Mattes v. Merchants Reserve Life Insurance Co., 221 Ul.App. 648, cited and commented upon by the majority in its opinion. It would indicate to me that the courts of Illinois would sustain liability in the instant case and not follow the Iowa case of Egg-ena v. New York Life Ins. Co., 236 Iowa 262, 18 N.W.2d 530. The Court in the instant case, commenting upon the Mattes case, said the insurer was held liable “apparently on the theory that the insured’s death did not result from his war service.” I think the Illinois courts have clearly indicated that all persons in service in time of war and on duty when killed are not to be considered as having met their death as a result of war or war service. It seems to me the courts of Illinois would not go the length of holding that anyone killed while in training in service would be excluded from coverage by the contract under consideration.
I would give the defendant nothing by construction that the plain words of the policy did not spell out. If the provision did not plainly exclude the insured from coverage, I would say he was covered. It seems to me the contract is not so plain, and it requires construction favorable to the defendant, extending the scope of the policy far beyond the ordinary meaning of the words used, to reach the conclusion reached by the Court. The defendant is not entitled to such a construction. To me it seems a strained construction in favor of the defendant to say that an incident, of training for war is the equivalent of an incident of war. People jump over cliffs and into hidden dangers in life outside the armed service, and certainly every one in service who is in training is not excluded by the provision in question. I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.