Connecticut Mut. Life Ins. v. Moss
Connecticut Mut. Life Ins. v. Moss
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
The terms of the present application and policy are similar to those of the case of Germania Ins. Co. v. Rudwig, 80 Ky. 233, 3 Ky. L. 712, and the rules of law therein laid down are applicable to the construction and interpretation of the contract in this case. No statement, whether true or false, contained in the application can operate to avoid the policy unless it was material to the risk; and in the light of the various questions in the application which relate to answers conveying or omitting to convey material information, this policy must be construed as having been made in conformity to that rule of law which is ample to protect the company from fraud, misrepresentation or concealment whereby it might be injured or led into a contract of insurance which it would not. otherwise have made. The appellant complains of various rulings of the lower court which will be considered in the oi'der made.
1. The court refused to put to the jury interrogatories 2 and 4, asked by the appellant. Those interrogatories were as follows: 2. “Was said Henry S. Moss, at any time prior to the date of said application, affected with cerebral amaurosis?” 4. “Is cerebral amaurosis a serious disease?” In lieu of them the court submitted this question: 1. “Did Henry S. Moss, at the time of making the application for insurance, have cerebral amaurosis?” In answer the jury found he did not. This was the proper scope of the question because it was not a disease which was inheritable and transmissible, and if free from it when the application was made there could be no verdict based upon its existence; if such was the case, twenty years before the date of the policy.
_ 2. The second interrogatory propounded by the court covered the whole period during which the appellant claimed that the disease named in it existed, or at least to which all evidence offered by appellant pointed; and the appellant had no right to -a drag net question which covered the greater portion of the lifetime of the deceased when there was no evidence tending to show the existence of the disease at any other period than that comprised in the in
3. The father of Henry S. Moss when he died was about seventy-five years old, and the testimony is conflicting as to whether he died of paralysis, asthma or old age, or all combined. The jury found that he died either of paralysis or asthma or both
4. Henry S. Moss stated in his application that his brother, Thomas G. Moss, was in moderate health. This the jury found to be true, and the evidence of Dr. Yandell, the age and crippled condition of Thomas G. Moss, with the unhealthy habit of using hair dye, furnish ample ground for this finding.
5. The evidence is sufficient to sustain the verdict that the maternal grandfather (James Spillman) of Henry S. Moss did not died of paralysis.
6. Henry S. Moss stated that his mother died of old age. She was about three score and ten when she died, and according to the verdict of the jury she was paralyzed some years before her death and had never entirety recovered from it. There is no finding, however, that she did not die of old age; nor is it necessarily inferable from the response of the jury that paralysis contributed to her death. It is true she had not entirety recovered, but that does not prove that Henry S. Moss’ statement that she died of old age was not true. The court did not err in refusing to give judgment in favor of appellant on that finding of the jury. The effort of the appellant after ransacking the family history, lineal and collateral, to show constitutional and transmissible disease in Henry S. Moss or his kindred, was not sufficient to satisfy the jury of any material fact supporting that view, and we can not say that any of the answers of the jury were palpably against the eyidence. The ages of the family seemed to be so^ far beyond the ordinary lifetime of man, and the descendants of Henry S. Moss free from any inherited diseased taint of flesh or blood, that we are from all the facts of this voluminous record and the intelligent expert evidence it contains convinced that each and every ground of the defense made by the appellant was specious and
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.