Court Opinion

ID: 9645200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:16:07.872972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:24.815846
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, Justice, dissenting. Even assuming that Milburn’s letter and check were mailed before the accident — an assumption open to serious .doubt — the majority is still wrong. The information and check were in the mail when the accident happened. That means that, in order for the act of mailing to constitute an acceptance, the insurance company’s offer to issue a policy must have been definite and complete. Restatement, Contracts, §§22 and 64 (1932). That is simply not true. To begin with, the notice of cancellation was merely a letter written by the local agent, as to which there is no rule of strict construction. But even if there were, all the letter said was that if you will send us certain information and a check, “we will proceed.” Webster’s Second New International Dictionary (1934) contains many definitions of “proceed,” but not one of them means what the majority have read into the word. To proceed is to continue, to go forward. To proceed on a journey does not mean to arrive at one’s destination. Here the company had to be satisfied with the information before a policy would be issued. The majority have simply created an ambiguity where there is none and then resolved it against the insurance company, which amounts to nothing less than rewriting the agent’s language to say what it did not say. Fogleman, C.J., and Hickman, J., join in this dissent.