Court Opinion

ID: 9832476
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:56:32.472847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:47.269666
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
The policy in issue contains the following stipulation: “If any employee, before attaining the age of sixty years and while insured hereunder, becomes totally disabled and presumably will thereafter during life be unable to engage in any occupation or employment for wage or profit, * * * such employee shall be deemed to be totally and permanently disabled.”
We quote the following paragraph from the charge copied in the original opinion: “If such total disability (if any) as mentioned in Subsection (b) immediately preceding, began before plaintiff, Mrs. H. S. Allen, was sixty years of age and thereafter presumably during her life, will prevent her from pursuing any occupation or employment for wage or profit, then she shall be deemed permanently and totally disabled.”
This charge in substance submitted to the jury the facts which, on the statement qf the policy, constituted total and permanent disability, and instructed the jury that, if such facts were found to exist, appel-lee should be “deemed permanently and totally disabled.” On authority of our opinion Connecticut Gen. Life Ins. Co. v. Warner, Tex.Civ.App., 94 S.W.2d 514, 516, absolutely on all fours with the facts in this case, the charge copied above constituted a . general charge. We quote as follows from the Warner case: “The court, in his charge to the jury, defined ‘total and permanent disability’- as follows: ‘By the term “total and permanent' dis*83ability” is meant that if said total disability, if any, began before reaching the age of sixty (60) years and presumably will, during his life prevent employee from pursuing any occupation for wages or profit, he shall be deemed to be totally and permanently disabled within the meaning of the policy in suit.’ * * * * This definition or charge was verbatim the statement in the policy of what facts would, within the meaning of the policy, constitute total and permanent disability. We do not think that said charge was a definition of any legal term in the charge to which it related, but that it was subject to the objection urged by appellant that it was an instruction upon the facts of the case, that is, as to what facts would show total and permanent disability, and that portion of the charge reading, ‘he shall be deemed to be totally and permanently disabled within the meaning of the policy in suit,’ was a general charge as to the law pertaining to that phase of the case relating to the character and extent of disability covered by the policy sued on, and, being so, was clearly in violation of article 2189, supra.”
The motion for rehearing is granted, and the judgment of the' lower court is reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial.
Reversed and remanded.