Court Opinion

ID: 9449887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:26:50.972424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:02.465967
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
It is plain that the undenied allegations in the pleadings and the meager stipulation of facts did not entitle Gray to summary judgment. But the grant of summary judgment to Mrs. Ditmars is a different and more perplexing matter. The issue is whether, if Gray could prove at a trial that Ditmars had taken his life for the sole or even for the primary purpose of diverting a large sum of money to his wife from the company of which he had been president and director from 1938 to 1956, and thex’eafter a well-paid “consultant” for another six years, equity ought not impress a trust in the company’s favor — not, indeed, for the entire face amount of the policy, but for the substantial cash surx’ender value which Gray would have been entitled to collect only a few hours later. Compare the division of proceeds directed in Manufacturers Life Ins. Co. v. Moore, 116 F.Supp. 171 (S.D. Calif.1953).
I cannot agree that Gx-ay’s position must be rejected because of a supposed inherent impossibility of its establishing Ditmars’ motivation with the degx’ee of assurance usually regarded as acceptable in a court of justice. The age has long since passed when it was “common knowledge that the thoughts of man shall not be tried, for the Devil himself knoweth not the thought of man,” Brian, J., in Y. B. 17 Edw. 4 Pasch. f. 2 (1477).. Now it is daily business for judges and juries to plumb “the mainsprings of human conduct,” C. I. R. v. Duberstein, 363 *445U.S. 278, 289, 80 S.Ct. 1190, 4 L.Ed.2d 1218 (1960), as, indeed, at Ditmars’ instance we directed not long ago with respect to himself, Ditmars v. C. I. R., 302 F.2d 481, 488 (2 Cir. 1962). Life itself may depend on a jury’s determination whether a defendant perpetrated a killing with or without “a deliberate and premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed,” N.Y.Penal Law, McKinney’s Consol.Laws, c. 40, § 1044, a task that often involves a far more subtle evaluation of motives than the problem here presented. E. g., People v. Caruso, 246 N.Y. 437, 159 N.E. 390 (1927) ; see Cardozo, What Medicine Can Do for Law, in Law and Literature and Other Essays 96-101 (1931). True, in such a case the subject of the inquiry is alive, but he often stands mute and, for obvious reasons, his own testimony as to motivation is rarely given weight. As compared to such a determination, one can have far greater assurance in the “simple” explanation of the motive for tragic suicides of the great depression, when men in excellent physical but poor financial health took their lives rather than suffer the lapse of large insurance policies that afforded the only hope of financial security for their loved ones. This is none the less so because of psychoanalytic efforts to ferret out what caused some to do this when others with a similar problem did not — an inquiry which does not deny the obvious motivation but rather questions why it led to action in some cases but not in others. If the facts we now have with respect to Ditmars were all we could ever get, the inference as to his motive would seem not merely possible but almost irresistible; his attaining what many of us deem the not so advanced age of 68, the memories of the New Year’s eves of yesteryear, and the prospective severance of association with a company from which he had been retired on the threat of a proxy fight six years before, see Ditmars v. C. I. R., supra, 302 F.2d at 487, are not nearly so significant as the timing of his suicide on the very day that yielded the optimum combination of financial benefits and life span. One can readily think of facts that might strengthen the inference, and of others that would weaken or even destroy it. But the task is of the sort that courts, regulating the relations of man and man, or of man and society, are frequently obliged to perform; to yield to a belief in “the untrustworthiness of the obvious” without a better substitute is a luxury that is not for them — as we would surely have to recognize if the contract had contained an express condition excluding a suicide for the purpose of maturing the policy.
Neither can I agree that the silence of the contract ends the matter; it would still be possible to impose on it what Corbin calls a “constructive condition” that Ditmars would not mature the policy by taking his life solely or primarily for his wife’s financial benefit. 3A Contracts, §§ 653-54 (1960 ed.). The crucial issue is whether we should. Bentham spoke of this process as one wherein the courts have “supplied the shortsightedness of individuals, by doing for them what they would have done for themselves if their imagination had anticipated the march of nature.” 3 Works, 190, quoted in Corbin, supra, at p. 140, fn. 9. It is clear enough that if Gray had asked for such a condition, either Ditmars would have agreed to it or there would have been no contract. But what is not so clear is that Gray would have sought a condition of this sort if the possibility of such action by Ditmars had occurred to it. Gray might well have considered that the risk was too small to warrant discussion and resentment, or even that, in the remote event that Ditmars should be willing to go to such lengths, his widow ought be allowed to retain what he so much wanted her to have. Hence I am not convinced either that such a condition would be “in harmony with what they [the parties] would have thought and said if they had foreseen the future,” Corbin, supra, p. 140, or that it would accord with “the inherent justice of the situation,” Giumarra v. Harrington Heights, Inc., 33 N.J. Super. 178, 109 A.2d 695, 701 (1954), *446aff'd 18 N.J. 548, 114 A.2d 720 (1955), which Corbin regards as a more useful formulation, pp. 140-41. Compare 6 Williston, Contracts §| 668, 669, 825 (1962 ed.). On this basis I join in the judgment of the court.