Court Opinion

ID: 9459846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:33:02.197249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:21.462584
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING AND PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
GODBOLD, Circuit Judge:
As one of its points in petition for rehearing Manhattan Life refers to and relies upon part I of the dissenting opinion of Judge Clark. We agree with Judge Clark that Trawick I did no more than bind an investigating insurance company to know what its files contain. Trawick I is not inconsistent with but wholly accords with Apperson v. USF & G, 318 F.2d 438 (CA5, 1963) and other cases stating the Mississippi rule. What Judge Clark and Manhattan center upon is one portion of the jury charge in Trawick II in which the trial judge, using language from Trawick I, stated “if the circumstances were such that the [investigating] company was in a position to ascertain the facts by a reasonable search as to the insured's heart trouble before issuing the policies, then the insurance company cannot avoid liability by pleading reliance on the insured’s medical application.”
Read in context in the Trawick I opinion, this language appears to us to have referred to the company’s obligation with respect to its own records and not to information that can be ferreted out from the world at large. In Trawick I the company took the position that it was not charged with the consequences of information filed away in its own records containing the fruits of its investigation of plaintiff unless plaintiff could prove that the officials of the company had become subjectively aware of the contents of the information. This position Trawick I rejected, and properly so.1
We did not refer to this issue in the majority opinion on this appeal because it appeared to us then, as it does now, that the “reasonable search” language in the jury charge in the second trial was used in the same context just described. Early in his charge the District Judge said this:
Now under these circumstances and conditions the sole and only question for you to decide in making your verdict in this case is as to whether or not Manhattan knew or had the facts in its possession from which it should have known that the insured Mr. Harrison Trawick had suffered heart attacks and was under treatment for heart attacks before it wrote the policies of insurance in suit.
In the sentence immediately following the “reasonable search” language the court instructed:
You are further instructed that the defendant is charged with knowledge of what appears in its own records and the fact that substantial information concerning the insured’s heart condition was contained in the defendant *549company’s file, if so, and was not proven to have been read or digested by the officers or employees, that will not prevent the company from being charged with knowledge of its contents.
The overall context of the charge is consistent with the factual structure of the second trial, a crucial issue of which was, as explained in the majority opinion on this appeal, whether Manhattan Life did or did not have in its files certain hospital records. The trial judge made clear, as Trawick I had done, that the insurer was charged with the information contained in those records if they were in its possession.
Thus Manhattan could not have been injured by the “reasonable search” language. The proof of the pudding, if any more be needed, is that four special interrogatories were addressed to the jury 2 and all four asked whether Manhattan Life “[had] information in its possession” from which it knew or should have known about Trawick’s condition. All four were answered “Yes.” Thus it is no more than an abstraction to urge that the general verdict was based on a misapprehension by the jury that Manhattan was charged with knowledge of what a “search” of the world at large would have revealed as to Trawick’s condition, when in response to specifically targeted questions the jury had answered that Manhattan had the information in its own files.
The petition for rehearing is DENIED, and no member of this panel nor Judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc, (Rule 35 Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; Local Fifth Circuit Rule 12) the Petition for Rehearing En Banc is denied.

. This court said :
“These precedents do not hold that an insurance company has the right to armor itself with a collation of medical facts and then employ that armor as a defensive weapon when a claim is made upon it. Rather they support our conviction that the defendant should be charged with knowledge of what appears in its own records. Therefore, the fact that substantial information concerning the insured’s heart condition was dungeoned in Manhattan’s files and not proven to have been read by human eyes or digested by medical experts is no escape route to evade liability.”
Trawick v. Manhattan Life Insurance Co., 447 F.2d 1293 at 1296 (CA5, 1971).

. Appearing in footnote 3 of the majority opinion.