Court Opinion

ID: 9418755
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:38:18.97214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:09.601004
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stone,
dissenting.
If an insurance policy is issued on written application and the company fails to deliver a copy of it to the in*101sured, along with the policy, the District statute, in terms, provides that “ no defense shall be allowed to such policy on account of anything contained in or omitted from the application.” In this case it does not appear that there was any written application, and as the defense was based on a clause contained in the policy, which purported to embody the “ whole contract,” no case was presented calling for the application of the statute, or which would enable a court to say just what force should be given to its prohibition in a case where the written application, not delivered with the policy, is in evidence. For that reason the case should be reversed if it is not, for other reasons, to be dismissed.
I think it should be dismissed. The certiorari was granted upon a petition which set forth as grounds for its allowance that the court below, in construing the prohibition of the statute, had “ decided erroneously a question of general importance ” and that the decision “ is in conflict with all decisions in other jurisdictions involving similar statutes and therefore tends to unsettle the law.” Upon the briefs and the argument the statutes of many states were quoted, prescribing the legal consequences of the failure of the insurer to deliver to the insured, with the policy, a copy of the written application. Most of them provide only that in such cases the application is not to be considered a part of the policy or received in evidence in a suit brought upon it. None contain language like that of the present statute prohibiting any defense on the policy “on account of anything contained in or omitted from ” the application, and we have been cited to no decision of any court outside the District of Columbia in which that language or any resembling it has been considered.
It thus appears that the construction of the statute which we were asked to review is not in the case, and even if it were, it is of local significance only. The conflict of *102decisions asserted is not shown. Plainly the question is not of such general interest or importance as under the rules and practice of this Court warrants its review upon certiorari. For these reasons it is the duty of this Court to dismiss the writ as improvidently granted. Tyrrell v. District of Columbia, 243 U. S. 1; Southern Power Co. v. Public Service Co., 263 U. S. 508; Houston Oil Co. v. Goodrich, 245 U. S. 440; Layne & Bowler Corp. v. Western Well Works, 261 U. S. 387; Furness, Withy & Co. v. Yang-Tsze Insurance Assn., 242 U. S. 430.
If the writ is not to be dismissed and the case is to be decided on the construction of the statute, the Court's reversal of the judgment, in the absence of the application which, for purposes of decision, it assumes to exist, can only proceed on the ground that under no circumstances could a defense based on a clause in the policy itself be said to be one “ on account of anything contained in or omitted from the application.” With that conclusion I am unable to agree. The defense here was that the insured was not in sound health at the date of the policy. Petitioner sought to establish it by showing that the state of health of the insured, then deceased, had been bad for several years before the policy was issued. If the written application were before the Court and revealed that the insured had been asked about his condition of health and had either answered fully and truthfully, or not at all, it would show, I think, that the defense, within the very meaning and purpose of the statute, was “ on account ” of something “ contained in or omitted from the application,” and that the petitioner was precluded from making it.
Mr. Justice Brandeis concurs in this opinion.