Court Opinion

ID: 9586728
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:14:17.199363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:48.723906
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
The basis for this whole appeal is conceded to be to find out if there is insurance, — and in what amount, — for the purpose of horse-trading for a settlement before the question of liability ever has been determined by a court or jury. It simply is a polite form of extortion, directed against an insurer, that had only a contract to pay if the insured was proven to be a tortfeasor. This contingent indemnity never exists, nor is it the basis of a lawsuit against the insurer without establishment of liability on the part of the insured.
Too many cases have hit this court, where the jury’s verdict happened to be exactly the principal sum of an insurance policy, to convince me that any litigant should get the verdict before the venire is impaneled, by the simple device of forcing divulgence of the amount of coverage on what I think is a strang.e argument to the effect that it will save the court’s time by a forced settlement without determining responsibility.
I had thé novél notion that courts served the litigants in a proper procedure under fair rules, — to determine what the evidence is and where if any, liability reposes. The insurance policy is not evidence to indicate speed, mental condition, the state of the weather, intoxication or anything else involved in an accident. If certain conditions point to liability which the arbiter of the facts finds, — then and only then is an insurer liable. To say it is responsible before the insured’s liability has been established in the court where he was sued by his accuser,' and the court makes the insured divulgé the amount of coverage he has, for the purpose of effecting a settlement,' just to accommodate the court’s calendar, in my humble opinion is plain dead wrong and has no place in judicial procedure. Such procedure is sanctioned in the main opinion, embellished with collateral’ arguments that the plaintiff should know if the oné he sues has means to pay by way of settlement, with the’cloak and dagger threat of a verdict, — not based on the issues, but the ability of an insurer to pay.
The rule (26(b)) cited by the main opinion to justify its conclusion, does not, in my opinion, say what the main opinion says it says. I think the majority has to indulge in considerable fly-specking in its in*195terpretation of it. It specks out one phrase to the effect that “the deponent may he examined regarding any matter, not privileged, which is relevant to the subject-matter involved in the pending action.” The opinion then leaves out half the rule and quotes the last part of the rule to the effect that “It is not ground for objection that the testimony will be inadmissible at the trial if the testimony sought appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.” The guts of the rule is that it be used “to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.” There is not even a squirt in this case, on appeal, to water the proposition that the rule was invoked to gather evidence, — but was used only to discover the amount of coverage, —ostensibly to help the court, — but super-ostensibly to set the sights for a David Harum one-eyed horse deal.
When the main opinion snatches on to the pleasant phrase “relevant to the subject matter,” it misses the whole letter and spirit of the rule and sattelites itself into space, not reality. The rule obviously is to procure evidence, — not to go fishing to catch a fish in order to bargain for a price at Fishermen’s Wharf. The “subject matter” in the rule obviously means the issue of liability, not the likelihood of adequately being compensated, hope of settlement depending on ability to pay or anything else.
If the main opinion stands, there is absolutely no reason why a plaintiff, who might have a phony claim, could not require the author of the main opinion, or anyone else, to open up his safety deposit box and divulge how green it is. Even the Supreme Court has said something about the right of privacy. A man’s contract is his own, whether it be with his lessor, banker, wife or insurance company.
The main opinion says that a candid and forthright approach requires that we recognize that people are more concerned about what money they can recover than a paper judgment. True, but so were the moneychangers in the Temple more concerned with money than the Sermon on the Mount. That does not justify the courts in seeing that the money-changers have an advantage in the courts.
There are thousands of fake suits instituted in this country. I don’t think this is one of them, but if you lay down a precedent that any tramp, for $17.00, can force a decent person to divulge his assets, — for the purpose of nudging him into a settlement of a possible cooked-up case, we and the courts are in trouble, — -and in concluding so we have cooked the sweet rules of procedure into a bitter brew of “boil and bubble, toil and trouble.”
In the case of Carman v. Fishel, 418 P.2d 963 (Okl.1966), Mr. Justice Lavender answers all of the reasoning of the main opinion much more articulately than I, to *196which opinion I respectfully invite the reader’s examination, and to whose logic and good sense I subscribe.
CALLISTER, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of HENRIOD, J.