Court Opinion

ID: 9698386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:49:03.660788+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:40.505446
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from the result reached by the majority and from the non sequitur procedure by which it ultimately decided this $9475.00 prize should belong to Hicks.
In 1962, John Proesch owned the real estate in question, which was successively sold on contract to Olive Kintzel and then, by her, to Hicks. In 1965, the property suffered a windstorm loss in the above amount. Kintzel had insured against this risk with defendant under a policy which named Proesch as “owner,” a term the majority correctly equates with the standard mortgagee designation. This is the contract at issue here. Hicks had obligated himself to procure insurance as a condition of his purchase agreement with Kintzel but he had failed to do so at the time the loss occurred.
After defendant denied liability Kintzel brought suit to enforce payment of the loss. Trial resulted in a judgment for defendant, from which Kintzel took no appeal. Proesch made no claim nor did he join in the suit against defendant. At no time, in fact, has Proesch by word or act suggested he had an interest in the policy or its proceeds.
Hicks got into the picture in 1965 when he purchased the property from Kintzel on contract, the instrument in which he agreed (but did not perform) to effect insurance against loss from certain risks, including windstorm. In 1967, (approximately two years after the loss) Proesch conveyed the property to Hicks and assigned to him the original Proesch-Kintzel contract. Another year passed, and on March 14, 1968, Hicks intervened in the then pending suit between Kintzel and defendant — the litigation which ended adversely to Kintzel and from which she did not appeal. The same judgment found against Hicks, too, and the case is here solely on his appeal.
Hicks’ right of recovery is based entirely on the 1967 assignment from Proesch. Although it was argued the main purpose of the assignment was to transfer Proesch’s interest in the policy proceeds to Hicks, the instrument itself is strangely silent on this vital subject. Nevertheless the majority find the parties so intended. It does so from both a silent assignment and a silent record on an issue Hicks had the duty to establish.
*812The case was submitted on stipulated facts. There is no mention of the contention now made — that the assignment of the real estate contract included the right to proceeds from an insurance policy issued to Kintzel. I agree whis would depend on what the parties meant by the language used, as the majority states. What I don’t agree with is the conclusion that the majority can somehow divine that intention in the absence of any facts to disclose what it was.
I take it there is no doubt this intention could have been shown under the doctrine of Hamilton v. Wosepka, 261 Iowa 299, 154 N.W.2d 164 (1967). Yet neither Proesch nor Hicks — the only parties who could know — testified on the matter. On the other side there is abundant evidence from the language used in the assignment and the conduct of the parties to negate any such intention.
I have already mentioned Proesch’s total lack of interest in the loss or its payment; the failure of the assignment to mention the claim; and the delay of more than two years before Hicks asserted any rights at all. This simply is not the conduct of two reasonable persons who are dealing with a claim an insurance company has already rejected and which is at that very moment in litigation. When one adds to this the extra circumstances that Hicks had defaulted on his own obligation to insure the property and Kintzel (the only insured) had failed to appeal from an adverse judgment, the result here is indeed startling.
I have no quarrel with the authorities cited by the majority on the law of assignments. They just don’t fit this case, for here there is nothing on which the majority can base its groundless finding that the assignment intended to transfer that which was ignored — ignored, incidentally, not only in the instrument itself but in the record as well. The majority has magically supplied the “evidence” which Hicks failed to produce.
Apparently even the majority is not satisfied with its assignment rationale, as it goes on to say Hicks could recover even without it. One trouble with that is the fact Hicks claims only as Proesch’s as-signee. I hope I am right in assuming the majority would not rule for Hicks on a theory neither pled nor relied on by him at trial.
I must beg deliverance from joining in such a self-styled “equitable” result and I therefore dissent.
MASON and RAWLINGS, JJ., join in this dissent.