Court Opinion

ID: 9829436
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:18:31.582163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:01.168648
License: Public Domain

On Appellant’s Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant’s argument in support of its claim of right to ask its proposed questions of the jury panel, it seems to us, comes to this: That the letter in which appellee’s counsel notified appellant that the insurance company had adjusted ap-pellee’s loss by transferring to him $311.63 by a “loan receipt” transaction is direct evidence; that the only inference which reasonable minds could draw therefrom is that said transaction was not a loan on account of loss, but a payment of the loss; that the pretended loan was a fraudulent subterfuge to conceal the fact of payment, and the insurance company was ipso facto subrogated to appellee’s claim for damages against appellant.
As it was pointed out in our original opinion, it is in the public interest that the insurance losses be adjusted promptly, and that insurance companies realize on their subrogation claims from wrongdoers to the end that insurance rates may be kept lower. A contract which has the tendency to promote such public interest will not, from mere suspicion, be construed as a fraudulent subterfuge. However, whether the “loan receipt” transaction here involved was a loan or a payment may be determined only from the intention of the parties to the “loan receipt” as expressed by them therein. It was competent for the parties to the “loan receipt” to provide that the money thereby transferred was intended as a loan, which appellee should be obligated to repay only from any sum which he recovered from appellant on account of the collision. In that connection it would have been competent for the parties to agree that the insurance company should have an irrevocable power of attorney to collect said claim for damages from appellant for appellee and to deduct therefrom the money owed it by appellee. If the “loan receipt” had so provided, and in the state of the record it should be presumed that it did so provide if necessary to support the court’s ruling, it would merely have constituted the relationship of debtor and creditor between appellee and the insurance company. In any case, appellant failed to make out a case that would have compelled the court to conclude that the insurance company was the real party at interest.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is refused.