Court Opinion

ID: 9566786
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:43:04.934419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:56.952734
License: Public Domain

SHENK, J.
The plaintiff as beneficiary sued on contracts of accident insurance issued to her husband Frank Linnastruth. The trial court, sitting without a jury, rendered judgment for the defendant. The plaintiff appealed. The facts are without substantial conflict.
All of the transactions and events took place in 1940. On July 17, Linnastruth signed applications for two policies of accident insurance of $1,250 each and paid $13 as the initial premium on each policy. Each application contained the following as the first paragraph: “I, the undersigned, hereby make application to the Mutual Benefit Health & Accident Association, for policy form M.I.A. 50 on the annual basis. I understand and agree that this application shall not be binding upon the Association until the policy is issued to me.”
The initial premiums were paid to the insurance solicitor, Abraham, who dated the applications July 20. On that day the applications and premiums were sent to the company’s Los Angeles office, and by that office to the home office in Omaha, Nebraska, for approval of the policies. The applications arrived at the home office on August 1, were approved on August 2, and the two policies were issued, dated August 5, for a term commencing on the date of issue. On August 6, they were taken to Linnastruth’s home at Hynes, California, where Linnastruth was lying unconscious from staphyloccic septicemia contracted from bodily injuries received in falls which had occurred on July 26 and 30. Linnastruth died on August 6, without regaining consciousness. The plaintiff had sent notice of the accidents to the association’s Los Angeles office on July 30. The notice was received by the home office on August 2. On August 10, the defendant denied liability for the reason that the injuries which resulted in death occurred prior to the date of issuance of the policies. The trial court *218for the same reason sustained the defense of nonliability interposed by the defendant.
There is no merit in the contention that coverage commenced from the date of the applications solely because at the time applications were made Abraham, the solicitor, said that it did. The plaintiff did not attempt to show by any evidence, except the remark made by Abraham, that the latter had any authority to bind the association as to the time when liability commenced. In addition to the agreement hereinbefore quoted, Linnastruth also expressly agreed in his application that the association was “not bound by any statement made by or to any agent unless written” in the application. It is conceded that the agent had no actual authority to bind the association on a contract of insurance, and the foregoing agreement gave notice that he had no such apparent authority. As noted, the applicant’s agreement was that the applications should not be binding upon the association until the policies issued, and inasmuch as the applicant and the association were bound only by the written statements, the rights of the plaintiff depend solely upon the effect of that agreement.
The principle that parties may contract as they please so long as they do not violate the law or public policy is applicable to insurance contracts. (Boyer v. United States F. & G. Co., 206 Cal. 273 [274 P. 57].) Nevertheless the plaintiff seeks to invoke the rule stated in Goorberg v. Western Assurance Co., 150 Cal. 510, 515 [89 P. 130, 119 Am.St.Rep. 246, 11 Ann.Cas. 801, 10 L.R.A. N.S. 876]; Fageol T. & C. Co. v. Pacific Indemnity Co., 18 Cal.2d 731, 747 [117 P.2d 661], and similar cases, that “any uncertainty or ambiguity in a contract of insurance is to be interpreted most strongly against the insurer.”  The plaintiff insists that the language used in the applications is susceptible to the construction that upon issuance of the policies the liability of the association commences from the date of the applications, rather than from the date of the issuance. The plaintiff has not presented a case which holds that the rule invoked is applicable to accomplish the result sought by her. The holdings in the cases relied upon do not support or warrant a conclusion that the words of the applications mean anything more that they purport to state, namely, that liability of the association commences on the date of issuance. On reading the quoted stipulations of the applications the mind, expert or inexpert, is stopped short of any conclusion that there was *219any authority for the oral representation of the solicitor. Any reader of the applications must be deemed to be placed with certainty on notice that coverage commenced not when the agent said it did, but upon the issuance of the policies. [3] An application for insurance is a proposal. A meeting of the minds is essential. And the proposal is not a completed contract until it is accepted by the insurer in the same terms in which the offer was made. If the acceptance modifies or alters any of the terms of the proposal, it must then in turn be accepted by the applicant to be effective as a contract. (Burch v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co., 85 Cal.App. 542, 552 [259 P. 1108], and cases cited; Beswick v. National Casualty Co., 206 Mo. App. 67 [226 S.W. 1031].)
The authorities relied upon by the plaintiff do not support her contentions. On the contrary they are consistent with the inevitable conclusion in this case. In Toth v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 123 Cal.App. 185 [11 P.2d 94], an application written and signed provided that the company should incur no liability under the application until it had been received, approved, and a policy issued, delivered, and the premium paid and accepted by the company in the lifetime of the applicant. The agent had represented that the applicant would be covered as soon as he was examined by the doctor. Two days after the examination the applicant died. No policy issued. In commenting on the provision in the application the court said: “The application provides explicitly that no insurance on the life of decedent was to be in effect until the delivery of the policy and the payment in full of the first premium ...” If no insurance was to be in effect until issuance or delivery of the policy, the effective date of insurance coverage must coincide with the effective date of liability. To say that liability does not attach until a certain date, but when it does attach on that date, it attaches as of an earlier date, is to place a strained and unwarranted construction on the plain language employed. In Stark v. Pioneer Casualty Co., 139 Cal.App. 577 [34 P.2d 731], the facts were sufficient to constitute negligence or estopped on the part of the insurer. In Hansen v. Farmers Auto. Inter-Ins. Exch., 139 Cal.App. 388 [34 P.2d 188], it was held that apparent authority in the soliciting agent to place in the application the date when liability should commence, did not authorize him to fix a date contrary to the provision of the application that the insurance *220should become effective when the application was accepted by the home office. The court interpreted the language to indicate coincidence between the dates of acceptance and liability.
In Beswick v. National Casualty Co., 206 Mo.App. 67 [226 S.W. 1031], also relied on by the plaintiff, the agent had filled in a date in the application when the policy was to be effective. The applicant had agreed that the application was not to be binding until accepted by the company. The application was accepted and the policy issued, dated however, a month later than the date inserted by the agent in the application, the plaintiff was accidentally injured in the interim. The court held that the agent had apparent authority to determine the effective date of the application; that the contract commenced as of that date; that the effect of the proposal otherwise was merely to subject the proffered contract of insurance to the approval of the company. The court distinguished factual situations where there was no evidence that the insurance applied for would be effective from the date of the application. In Douglass v. Mutual Ben. Health & Accident Assn., 42 N.M. 190 [76 P.2d 453], the facts showed that the powers of the agent were attempted to be narrowed by limitations not communicated to the applicant. It was held that, in the absence of express provisions indicating the effective date of the policy and the limitation on the agent’s authority, the agent had apparent authority to determine the effective date of the policy and bind the company thereby. The factors which determined the defendant’s liability in those cases are absent here. Where the applicant had notice, as in the present ease, of the limitations on the agent’s authority and of the effective date of the policy, it has been held that the insurer was not bound by any oral representation of an earlier effective date. (Harris v. Mutual Ben. Health & Accident Assn., 187 Ark. 1038 [63 S.W.2d 975], Rainsbarger v. Mutual Ben. Health & Accident Assn., 227 Iowa 1076 [289 N.W. 908].) In the case last cited a policy was issued under agreements and circumstances very similar to those in the present case, and a judgment dismissing the plaintiff’s petition was affirmed.  There are no facts here presented which would justify a finding of negligence, waiver, or estopped on the part of the insurer. Delay alone is not sufficient to create a contract of insurance. (Lucas v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 14 Cal.App.2d 676, 680 [58 P.2d 934], citing eases.) Con*221sidering the geographical distances here involved, no more than a reasonable time elapsed between the date of the applications and the issuance of the policies. Neither the retention of the premium until return was tendered at the trial, nor the issuance of the policies after notice of the accidents, sufficed to impose liability prior to the date of the policies, in view of the statement in the applications that liability would not attach until the policies issued. The insured or the beneficiary could not have been misled by any act of the association.
Our conclusion is that the trial court correctly decided that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover on the contracts of insurance issued by the defendant.
The judgment is affirmed.
Gibson, C. J., Edmonds, J., and Traynor, J., concurred.