Court Opinion

ID: 9830793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:29:53.349774+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:26.967644
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In its motion for rehearing defendant in error, among other assignments, .urges that we erred, in any event, in rendering judgment for the premiums paid by Cross from the time he joined the order up to the time he transferred to the whole life plan on or about January 1, 1905. Upon examination of this question we have concluded that sai,d defendant in error is correct.
In his pleadings plaintiff in error alleged throughout that the whole life plan to which he changed or converted in 1905 was a new contract. In order to obtain it, he made his election in December, 1904, under the changed by-laws of the order authorizing him to do so, expressly waived all claim to total and permanent disability benefits provided for under his old certificate, agreed to a change in rates from $1.95 per month to $4.35 per month, and chose an entirely new and distinct insurance protection from that formerly carried. In his application to do so we find the following language immediately above his signature:
“I hereby surrender my present certificate, that a new one may be issued under the whole life plan.”
It is true that the old certificate, with riders attached, was returned to him, but we think the result was the same as if a new and separate certificate had been issued to him.' We are of the opinion, therefore, that his former certificate was matured in 1904, and that his changed insurance constituted an entirely new contract. That being true, the old contract was not breached, and he can recover nothing paid thereunder. .This question was expressly determined in Supreme Lodge K. of P. v. Mims (Tex. Civ. App.) 167 S. W. 835, a case very similar in many respects to the case at bar, and in which a writ of error was refused by the Supreme Court. We deem further discussion of this point unnecessary, and content ourselves with referring to the Mims Case.
The defendant in error’s motion is granted in part and our former judgment herein reformed, so as to deny plaintiff in error recovery of any of the premiums paid by him prior to January 1, 1905, the date he transferred to the whole life plan, and judgment is here now rendered in his favor for $1,532.09, together with interest thereon from March 20, 1925, at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum.
In all other respects said motion is overruled.
Motion granted in part, and in part overruled.