Court Opinion

ID: 9443033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:08:09.592545+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:20.460492
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The law of this case in my judgment cannot be better stated than in the opinion of the learned District Judge reported in 97 F.Supp. 987.
I would add only a few remarks to those so ably expressed by Judge Kennamer. In my opinion this case should be controlled by the Alabama law as found in the case of Woodmen of the World Life Ins. Soc. v. Braden, 242 Ala. 606, 7 So.2d 311. In that case Mr. Justice Bouldin of the Alabama Supreme Court cited the case of Werner v. Travelers’ Protective Association, 5 Cir., 37 F.2d 96, from this Court, and quoted at length from the opinion of Judge Walker in the Werner case. The opinion of Judge Hutcheson as the District Judge in that case is reported in 31 F.2d 803.
The cases of Order of United Commercial Travelers v. Knorr, 10 Cir., 112 F.2d 679, and Wigginton v. Order of United Commercial Travelers, 7 Cir., 126 F.2d 659, involved the same insurer as this, but the by law provision involved in each of those cases was significantly different from that here involved. The provision then read as follows: “Nor shall the Order be liable for any death benefit when the member dies as the result of injuries sustained as a result of a gunshot wound or the alleged accidental discharge of firearms where there is no eye-witness except the member himself, in an amount greater than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00).”
That by law provision now has added after “eye-witness” the following: “to *847such discharge.” Circuit 'Judge Minton, now Mr. Justice Minton of the Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in the Wigginton case, and, as one of the grounds of decision, held that it was reasonable to construe the quoted provision as it then existed to mean that there shall be an “eye-witness” to the “dying” instead of to the “shooting”, and that since a witness arrived before the insured died, the requirements of the policy were met.
It certainly is true that “eye-witness” requirements, when reasonably subject to more than one construction, should be construed liberally in favor of the insured. I cannot, however, escape the conclusion that the addition of the words “to such discharge” after the term “eye-witness” removed the ambiguity in the meaning of the provision that bedeviled the Wigginton case.
At first thought “eye-witness” would appear to be a term of clear meaning easily understood. Actually it has proved deceptively indefinite and doubtless will continue to be a source of trouble to the courts. The cases which have arisen or can arise are of infinite variety. The fatal shot may have been fired from ambush or from a distance. There may have been a clear eye-witness who^ escaped or cannot be produced. A person actually within eye range of the deceased may not have been looking, or may have been blind, or even so deaf as not to have heard the discharge of the gun, or unconscious from sleep, drink, or insanity, or an infant and incapable of being a witness of any kind. The insurer might conceivably argue for the impossible construction that the witness must have seen the bullet emerge from the gun and travel upon its course. Difficulty of precise definition cannot justify courts in denying to contracting parties the right to use terms of their own choice or excuse courts from a duty to arrive at a common sense rather than a fanciful meaning for such terms.
Mr. Justice Bouldin for the Alabama Supreme Court in Woodmen of the World Life Ins. Soc. v. Braden, supra [242 Ala. 606, 7 So.2d 313], defined eye-witness as follows: “An eye-witness is one who sees the actual shooting in such manner that he forms a fair judgment upon whether the • gunshot was accidental or intentional.” This court in Werner v. Travelers Protective Association, supra, said in effect that an eye-witness must be one within ocular view of the happening. If we abandon that test and say that a person even three feet out of eye-range of the insured is nevertheless an eye-witness where shall we stop? Shall we go as far as the shot can be heard? Cases of difficulty or those leading to absurd results must be met as they arise. It does not seem to me that this is such a case. I have read many cases including all that my brothers have suggested but I have not been able to attain to the vantage of their viewpoint. With my limited vision, I feel that I have no more right to bring imagination to the support of sympathy and thereby in effect to strike out the requirement of an “eyewitness to such discharge” than I would have boldly to change the amount of a $500.00 policy to $5,000.00. I therefore respectfully dissent.