Court Opinion

ID: 9573811
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:59:33.938599+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:24.364395
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice.
I dissent. The main opinion seems to overlook the real point. The policy provided two ways for cancellation, 1) by the assured, and 2) by the company. Where cancelled by the assured, the company had no duty to notify anyone. That is this case. Where the company cancelled the policy it was required to notify the assured and the loss-payee. That is not this case.
The company did everything incumbent upon it to do under the plain, unambiguous language of the policy.
The main opinion accurately points out that the insurance company assumed the risk for both the assured and the loss-payee, but this has nothing whatever to‘ do with the question of what notice must be given if the assured cancels the policy. None is required. The observation in the main opinion that it would be manifestly unjust not to protect the loss-payee here, may be a philosophical suggestion, and a subject for invocation of equity on some sort of quasi-contractual theory (which I doubt would get anywhere), but not in this case where an action at law was instituted based on the plain terms of a written contract. Clearly the provisions of the policy are done complete violence by the summary judgment in favor of the loss-payee. The same conclusion is inescapable anent the ipse dixit of the majority opinion that it does not seem unfair that the insurance people should be required to notify the loss-payee. They never agreed to do so under the clear terms of the policy. And the argument about resulting difficulty if notice be not given the loss-payee, flies in the teeth of the plain terms of the policy. To decide that the loss-payee was entitled to notice under the facts here, in light of the policy, is to supply non-existent terms in an integrated contract, without consideration and in violation of the parol evidence rule, favoring one over another of the principals therein.
By some sort of casuistry, the main opinion says that by recognizing the loss-payee as an insured, which it need not have done, the insurer was obliged to know the loss-payee would expect to be protected, and therefore, by the most illogical non-sequitur in the whole opinion, it is concluded that *325therefore “Defendant Premier was then duty bound to treat the loss payee * * * as an insured whose rights could not be canceled without notice.” This is a gratuity indulging the luxury of forcing, by judicial fiat, one party to a contract to become bound by that which he deliberately, and in writing, refused to do. It would be interesting to see the reaction of those in the insurance field, in examining this decision, and it would be more interesting to observe the crimson reaction of the attorneys who obviously and carefully drafted a cancellation clause to protect their clients against the very eventuality that occurs here, viz., this decision.
CALLISTER, J., having disqualified himself, did not participate.