Court Opinion

ID: 9586337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:09:39.423804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:33.028947
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Chief Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree that because the insurance applicant was taking physician-prescribed medication for her disease of the circulatory system, she was being treated for it and was required to answer affirmatively on the application.
The majority opinion relies on two dictionary definitions for the meaning of the verb in the insurance application. One is from Black’s Law Dictionary (4th ed.) as quoted in Beggs v. Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co., 171 Ga. App. 204, 205-206 (318 SE2d 836) (1984). But in Beggs the Court rejected that definition as being broader than accepted under Georgia law. The Court applied instead, as governing, the narrower definition from the whole court case of Mut. Life Ins. Co. &c. v. Bishop, 132 Ga. App. 816, 818 (2) (209 SE2d 223) (1974).
Bishop involved a group hospitalization insurance policy which excluded coverage for certain “medical care or treatment.” The Court ruled: “These words generally refer to something done in the application of the curative arts, whether by drugs or other therapy, with the end in view of alleviating a pathological condition. Thus, surgery, in its extended sense, may constitute ‘care and treatment’ when a mere examination or evaluation does not.” Id. The Court held, by a bare majority, that two preoperative visits to the doctor for diagnostic and evaluation purposes only did not constitute “medical care or treatment” so as to exclude coverage. Four judges dissented, and although they agreed that the word “treatment” as used in the policy was not a technical word and was to be given its ordinary meaning in its common, plain, ordinary and usual sense, and a reasonable scope, it included the preliminary examination, diagnosis and preparation for cure.
Despite the rejection of the Black’s Law Dictionary definition by the majority in Bishop, a division of the Court applied that definition the following year in Young v. Yarn, 136 Ga. App. 737, 738 (1) (222 SE2d 113) (1975). It construed the Georgia informed consent statute’s requirement of disclosure of “treatment or course of treatment” not to include risks of treatment.
As was done in Beggs, we must follow Bishop and not repeat the error in Young. In this particular case, the result is the same, because Brown was being treated for a vascular disease, a disease of the circulatory system, by way of medication prescribed by her physicians Dr. Kirschbaum and Dr. Lamis. This constituted “something done in the application of the curative arts, whether by drugs or other therapy, with the end in view of alleviating a pathological condition.” Bishop, supra at 818. The fact that she had not visited the *674doctors in the year preceding her submission of the application for insurance, or that they had not made the prescription during that period, did not mean that she had not “been treated” during that period. It is undisputed that she had been, and she still was, taking the medication they prescribed.
Decided August 5, 1996
Reconsideration denied September 5, 1996
Glenville Haldi, for appellant.
Levine & Block, Stephen H. Block, for appellee.