Waldrup v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 21163

• Decision Date: 04 March 1980
• Docket Number: No. 21163,21163
• Citation: 274 S.C. 344,263 S.E.2d 652
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Elaine WALDRUP, Respondent, v. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant.

Page 652

263 S.E.2d 652

274 S.C. 344

Elaine WALDRUP, Respondent, v. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant.

No. 21163.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

March 4, 1980.

H. Donald Sellers and Thomas H. Coker, Jr., Haynsworth, Perry, Bryant, Marion & Johnstone, Greenville, for appellant.

Robert L. Waldrep, Jr., Anderson, for respondent.

GREGORY, Justice:

Respondent Elaine Waldrup brought this action as an insured employee of Dow Badische Company (Dow) under a group disability insurance policy issued by appellant Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The appeal is from a jury's verdict awarding respondent $7,627.50 in benefits under the policy's coverage provisions for long-term total disability. We affirm.

The policy affords coverage for and distinguishes between short-term and long-term total disability. Short-term disability coverage is available to Dow's employees during the first thirty months of disability if the employee is unable to adequately perform the key or essential duties of his or her job at Dow at the time of injury. Long-term disability benefits are payable under the terms of the policy if:

. . . the employee is totally disabled so as to be wholly prevented from engaging in any and every gainful occupation for which he is reasonably fitted by education, training, experience . . . . (emphasis added)

It is the long-term disability and the above-quoted policy standard which are at issue in this case since respondent was paid the full thirty months' benefits allowable under the short-term disability provisions of the policy.

Appellant contends a portion of the trial judge's charge to the jury was inconsistent with the standard of the policy and the applicable law on total disability in that the jury could have erroneously concluded respondent was totally disabled within the meaning of the policy if she could not return to her former position only, rather than to "any and every gainful occupation for which she is reasonably fitted."

That portion of the charge which appellant finds objectionable is the following:

Total disability contemplated by contracts of insurance is the inability to do substantially all the material acts necessary for the prosecution of the insured's occupation in substantially her accustomed and usual manner.

This judicial pronouncement of the degree of physical incapacity required for total disability is recognized in an unbroken line of authority in this state. Coker v. Pilot Life Insurance Company, 265 S.C. 260, 217 S.E.2d 784 (1975); Shealy v. United Insurance Company of America, 239 S.C. 71, 121 S.E.2d 345 (1961), and numerous cases cited therein. It is normally preceded by the words "total disability does not mean absolute helplessness," as it was in this case.

In our view, to say that this portion of the charge is inconsistent, or incorrect, or contradictory in the light of the policy standard or applicable law is to take it out of context and view it in isolation from the rest of the charge. A charge must be construed and considered as a whole before an assignment of prejudicial error will lie to that discrete portion complained of. See cases collected in 18 West's South Carolina Digest, Trial, § 295.

The balance of the instructions on total disability precisely stated the standard...