Court Opinion

ID: 9547940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:54:45.845221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:17.109381
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring and dissenting in part).
I agree that the evidence was insufficient to show intoxication, and that it was error *407■to admit the record of a previous criminal trial. I cannot agree, however, that this is ■a proper action for a declaratory judgment. It represents a collateral suit having the effect of holding up a pending suit, to determine facts issuable therein. It is an evasion of the insurance company’s written promise to defend the pending action •against the claim of intoxication or other ■dereliction. It prosecutes the assured in the face of such promise, for which promise the assured paid and the company accepted hard earned money as a premium. Worse still, it forces the assured to the expense of defending himself against his erstwhile defender, who now tries to prove that which it was its duty to try and disprove, — the assured’s intoxication. It acts as a writ of prohibition and would allow a company to take advantage of crowded court calendars, to be followed by an appeal, while the witnesses and evidence in the stalemated pending action disappear, the company becoming the beneficiary of such disappearance by relieving itself not only of its liability, but its specific covenant to defend the assured.
It is no answer to say, as does the main opinion, that it is inclined to agree with the ■idea that the insurance company should not be permitted to delay the action already instituted against its assured, since, as a practical matter here, such delay is fait accompli. Besides, the absurdity of such a conclusion is manifest on its face. If the two actions were allowed to proceed simultaneously under such theory, the insurance company would be talking out of both sides of its mouth by attempting to prove, under its duty to defend in the one action, that its assured was not intoxicated, while in the other action and at the same time, it would be attempting to prove that its assured was intoxicated. In my opinion, declaratory judgment legislation never was intended to effectuate such a silly and illegitimate result.
The ridiculosity of permitting the insurance company to maintain this secondary, procedural appendix under the guise of being a justiciable controversy within the declaratory judgment act, to prove a fact situation already in issue in another pending suit, is made absurdly apparent in this very case. Here the insurance company tried and did prove its own assured to be a drunkard to the satisfaction of the trial judge, who made findings to that effect, and now that we reverse the case, the selfsame insurance company is duty bound to reverse its role and do everything in its power to prove that the assured was as sober as the trial judge, under the very covenant from which unsuccessfully it attempted to extricate itself. If the insurance company were not allowed to prosecute this hybrid supplementary suit, it would have to defend and attempt to show its assured was not intoxicated, the proving of which would eliminate the insurance com*408pany’s liability to the person allegedly injured by its assured. If it did so defend and it was established that the assured was drunk, the insurance company likewise would be absolved from liability under the provisions of the policy, so that by carrying out its solemn promise to defend all actions brought against the assured, groundless or not, it 'would lose but little and would have relieved its assured from any expense of defending himself, which the company represented it would do when it accepted the premium.