Court Opinion

ID: 9546241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:26:33.909825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:11.447381
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
The district court decision should be upheld. The district court manifestly entertained an overall view of the attendant circumstances to which the majority is blinded. At stake here is a question of public policy. The people of Idaho through their legislature have decreed that public policy in Idaho is against allowing any person to profit or gain from his own wrongful conduct. Such declaration by the legislature is not novel; that philosophy has forever guided the courts of Idaho, and other jurisdictions as well. The majority, for reasons which are wholly unfathomable, hangs the reversal of the district court decision on the flimsy predicate (appearing in the final paragraph) which states that “I.C. § 15-2-803 appears in the intestacy section of the Idaho Probate Code and not in the insurance section.” Conceding that the majority has correctly ascertained where § 15-2-803 can be located the Idaho Code, there is no sense or logic whatever to the hypothesis that the statutory law is not the law simply because it is found in a title of the Code other than where the majority poses that it should be found.
The Slayer’s Statute, as it has come to be known, after defining “slayer” as a person who participates in the willful and unlawful killing of another person, and after defining property as realty or personalty or any interest therein, declares that: “No slayer shall in any way acquire any property or receive any benefit as a result of the death of the decedent, but such property shall pass as provided in the sections following,” and in subsequent sections laid out the legal fiction that “the slayer shall be deemed to have predeceased the decedent ... ” — thus in the eyes of the law not surviving to take either under the will or by intestate succession.
Notwithstanding the insurance proceeds are by nature personal property, and if not property, per se, certainly a “benefit.” A further provision of § 15-2-803 governing insurance policies specifically provided that insurance policy proceeds will not go to the slayer:
(j)(l) Insurance proceeds payable to the slayer as the beneficiary or assignee of any policy or certificate of insurance on the life of the decedent, or as the surviv- or of a joint life policy, shall be paid instead to the estate of the decedent, unless the policy or certificate designate some person other than the slayer or his estate as secondary beneficiary to him in *1011which case such proceeds shall be paid to such secondary beneficiary in accordance
with the applicable terms of this policy. In the foregoing passage the words “shall be paid to the estate of the decedent” have been underlined. It is hoped that doing so will gain the majority’s attention to the fact that the legislature was not without justification for inserting this paragraph into the Probate Code. Experience suggests that slayer statute situations more generally involve realty and personal property other than insurance proceeds than insurance proceeds only.
While it would seem that any legal mind would conclude that the paragraphs of § 15-2-803 dealing with property — above set forth — sufficiently encompass insurance proceeds, because a beneficiary who wrongfully kills the named insured is deemed to have predeceased the insured, the 1971 legislature’s additional treatment of insurance proceeds was occasioned by the then recent case of Anstine v. Hawkins, 92 Idaho 561, 447 P.2d 677 (1968). The sole issue in that appeal was whether Doris Anstine could succeed to the estate of the husband whose shooting death occurred at her hands. The estate included community property and also involved were the proceeds of a life insurance policy which named Doris Anstine as the beneficiary. The husband’s children by a former marriage contended that it was “a violation of public policy to allow” Doris Anstine to inherit or obtain the insurance proceeds. This Court in a unanimous opinion allowed Doris Anstine to prevail. In doing so it observed as to matters of public policy that if the law as written is “socially or otherwise unsound, the power to correct is legislative, not judicial____ The legislature has the resources for the research, study and proper formulation of broad public policy.” Like the phoenix, out of the ashes of Anstine, arose II (j)(l) of § 15-2-803.
The legislative policy was not, however, that the insurance company selling the policy in question reap the windfall harvest of premiums collected without paying the insurance proceeds to anyone, but, quite the contrary, that the proceeds “be paid into the estate of the decedent, unless the policy or certificate designate some person other than the slayer or his estate as secondary beneficiary in which case such proceeds shall be paid to such secondary beneficiary____”
In such manner did the legislature respond to Anstine, setting the public policy of this state that the slayer shall gain neither property nor benefit by his wrongful act, BUT, declaring specifically that insurance proceeds do not lapse, and either go into the estate of the decedent, or to designated secondary beneficiaries. In this case the policy provided that:
“If, at the death of the Insured, there is no surviving designated beneficiary, the indemnity shall be payable in one sum to the first surviving class of the following classes of beneficiaries: (1) wife; (2) husband; (3) child or children; ... (7) estate of the insured.”
No. (1) was the slayer, No. (2) was the deceased insured, and (3) are the children. No. 1, Betty Jane Mitchell, is deemed to have predeceased the insured, and hence is not a surviving designated beneficiary. That is the legislature’s law. Equally its law, the policy does not lapse. Rather obviously, the majority is far off base in declaring that “The sole purpose of I.C. § 15-2-803 is to prevent a wrongdoer from profiting from his or her own wrong.” That is a purpose of the section, but the section also goes on to provide where the property or insurance proceeds will go when the slayer is deemed to have predeceased the decedent. The majority would have one believe that the legislature so enacted aimlessly, that is, without purpose.
The district court was absolutely correct in its perception that: “The slayer’s statute as a matter of sound public policy should take precedence and prevail over provisions of an insurance contract to the contrary.” Memorandum Decision, R., p. 59.
The majority would do well to at least attempt a distinction between this case and Pendlebury v. Western Casualty, 89 Idaho 456, 406 P.2d 129 (1965), where this Court *1012succinctly, to the point, and without seeing any need for elaboration, stated: “It is axiomatic that the obligation of I.C. § 41-1839 became part and parcel of the contract of insurance to the same effect as though incorporated therein.” 89 Idaho at 470. So axiomatic that the Pendlebury opinion provided no citation. But little effort was required to ascertain that the same statement was made in Fidelity Trust Co. v. State, 72 Idaho 137, 149, 237 P.2d 1058 (1951). Chief Justice Taylor participated in both Pendlebury and Fidelity Trust. See also Robinson v. Joint School District #150, 100 Idaho 263, 265, 596 P.2d 436 (1979). If the pertinent provisions of § 15-2-803 are thus part and parcel of the insurance contract now before us, can Fireman’s Fund relieve itself of those provisions by inserting into the policy a purported exclusion which overrides and nullifies the statute? I say no. Emphatically no. An insurance company doing business in Idaho cannot override Idaho’s public policy.
Our neighboring state of Wyoming early recognized that even where there is not a specific section dealing expressly with insurance proceedings, that those proceeds are benefits and must be distributed under the statutory scheme. Application of Ha-good, 356 P.2d 135, 138 (Wyo.1960). In that same case the court also said, as did this Court in Pendlebury, that:
It is well settled that laws which subsist at the time and place of making of a contract, and where it is to be performed, enter into and become a part of it as though expressly referred to and incorporated in its terms.
Hagood was relied upon by the Wyoming Court in Dowdell v. Bell, 477 P.2d 170 (1970), where a unanimous court agreed that the provisions of a slayer’s statute took precedence over conflicting provisions in the insurance contract — where the primary beneficiary was precluded.
Even absent prior case law form this Court, and even without authority from other jurisdictions, the result achieved by the majority is simply incomprehensible. Whatever else might be said concerning legislative intent insofar as we are concerned with § 15-2-803, it is impossible to glean therefrom any thought of disqualifying all of an insured’s beneficiaries from inheriting or property or receiving insurance benefits simply because one beneficiary perpetrated a disqualifying homicide.
Moreover, and a thought that may well startle the majority, even in merry old England (where the base proposition first evolved in medieval days) ever since the year 1813 the doctrine of forfeiture of lands and corruption of the blood has been and remained abolished. Statute 54 Geo. Ill c. 45. This, according to the gospel of Avery v. Everett, 110 N.Y. 317,18 N.E. 148 (N.Y.Ct.App.1888), in which state where, as a colony, the doctrine also obtained. Furthermore, a cursory reading of the Constitution of the United States demonstrates that this concept has been riven from American jurisprudence: “The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.” United States Constitution, art. Ill, § 3, cl. 2.
Without hesitation I submit to my colleagues that it is without the law, and in violation of the public policy of this and all of the 50 states to visit the sins of the father’s wife upon the father’s children. Or, to the point, an insurance company may not relieve itself of its contractual obligation to pay insurance proceeds to the children of Norman Mitchell simply because of Betty Mitchell’s guilt. To so oblige Fireman’s Fund, as the majority this day does, is a clear violation of the public policy set by the legislature.
Moreover, putting aside corruption of the blood, I would also uphold the district court on the basis of this statement from our opinion in Foremost Insurance Co. v. Putzier, 102 Idaho 138, 627 P.2d 317 (1981):
Moreover, although the doctrine of reasonable expectations is not the law in Idaho, there is the closely analogous rule of contract construction pointed out by Justice Donaldson in his opinion in Cor*1013gatelli v. Globe Life & Accident Co., 96 Idaho 616, 533 P.2d 737 (1975), wherein, citing Shields v. Hiram C. Gardner, Inc., supra, he wrote:
“[t]he doctrine of probability or reasonableness has long been a rule of construction geared toward ascertaining intent in situations of ambiguity. The standard to be applied is what a reasonable person in the position of the insured would have understood the language to mean.” 96 Idaho at 622, 533 P.2d at 743. (Donaldson, J., dissenting.)
102 Idaho at 142, 627 P.2d at 321 (emphasis original).
Most people I know who have purchased insurance policies, and they are all reasonable people, would here understand only that they had purchased an accident policy which, in case of death, would pay the sum certain therein designated. Those knowing of the Anstine case, and the ensuing statutory law (which all are presumed to know), would reasonably expect only that the perpetrator of the homicide was disqualified from receiving the insurance benefits.
Noting that in the Foremost case I was one of the majority there embracing the language of Justice Donaldson in his dissent in Corgatelli v. Globe Life & Accident Insurance Co., 96 Idaho 616, 533 P.2d 737 (1975), I join other members of the bench and bar who have been hard-pressed to find any distinction between that portion of Justice Donaldson’s opinion and Justice Shepard’s Corgatelli opinion wherein the latter wrote:
The doctrine of reasonable expectations proceeds from an acceptance of the fact that most insurance policies are contracts of adhesion. Ordinarily there can be no bargaining over the terms of the contract. The buyer either accepts the policy as written or turns elsewhere where he will usually be confronted with the same dilemma resulting from the same terminology. If the layman actually studies the contract he usually becomes bewildered and/or uncertain as to the terminology. He expects that he will be generally insured and does not anticipate these expectations will be upset by an artfully drawn clause that he will be unable to detect or, in the event detected, will be powerless to modify. Indeed, this court can take notice that usually an insured never sees his policy until after he has paid his premium and the contract has been formed.
The doctrine of reasonable expectations is peculiarly applicable to contracts where as here it is drawn in such a fashion that one hand steals away what the other seemingly confers. A close analysis of the literal meaning of the words in the provision in question solves none of the problems since the literal language is at odds with the reasonable expectations an insured would obtain from the contract.
Corgatelli, supra, at 619-21, 533 P.2d at 740-42. As is readily noted, putting ambiguity aside, where Justice Donaldson (and the Foremost majority) endorsed “the doctrine of probability or reasonableness,” Justice Shepard’s terminology was “the doctrine of reasonable expectations.” Justice Donaldson declared the applicable standard to be what a reasonable insured would have understood; Justice Shepard wrote the applicable standard to be what a layman reasonably expected.1 Having been to Missouri, if there is a difference, I say “show it to me.” Other than where the insurance salesman has advised the purchaser of insurance what his policy pro*1014vides, it is inescapable that an insured’s expectations are going to be based on what he understood from the policy language. If there is not any difference, and where there is a clear legislative directive of public policy involved, why is the majority reversing a district judge who committed no error? If there is a difference, ought not the learned members of this Court be able to illustrate it for the benefit of the bench and bar?

. Forty-five years ago the nine-member Washington Supreme Court, en banc, stated the applicable standard in almost identical language:
In our opinion, the proper inquiry is not whether a learned judge or scholar can, with study, comprehend the meaning of an insurance contract, but whether the insurance policy contract would be meaningful to the layman who at his peril may be legally bound or held to understand the nature and extent of its coverage. The language of insurance policies is to be interpreted in accordance with the way it would be understood by the average man, rather than in a technical sense. Zinn v. Equitable Life Ins. Co., 6 Wash.2d 379, 107 P.2d 921 (1940).