Anderson v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co.
| Citation | 96 S.W.2d 631 |
| Decision Date | 15 September 1936 |
| Docket Number | No. 23241.,23241. |
| Parties | ANDERSON v. METROPOLITAN LIFE INS. CO. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Missouri (US) |
Appeal from Circuit Court, St. Francois County; Taylor Smith, Provisional Judge.
"Not to be published in State Reports."
Action by Clarence E. Anderson against the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals.
Reversed and remanded, with directions, on condition of remittitur.
Fordyce, White, Mayne & Williams, of St. Louis, and Oliver & Oliver, of Cape Girardeau, for appellant.
Davis & Damron, of Fredericktown, and L. W. Chapman, of St. Louis, for respondent.
This is an action for the total and permanent disability benefits provided by a policy of group insurance heretofore issued by defendant, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, to St. Joseph Lead Company for the benefit and protection of the latter's employees, of whom the plaintiff herein, Clarence E. Anderson, was one until he voluntarily quit his employment on March 31, 1932, which, incidentally, was the date as of which the provision in question was canceled by the company.
The clause provided, in substance, that upon receipt at its home office in New York city of due proof that any employee, while insured under the policy, and prior to his sixtieth birthday, had become totally and permanently disabled as a result of bodily injury or disease so as to be prevented thereby from engaging in any occupation and performing any work for compensation or profit, the company would waive the payment of further premiums as to such employee, and six months after receipt of such proof, and in lieu of the payment of insurance at his death, would commence to pay monthly installments of disability benefits computed as to number and amount upon the basis of the amount of insurance in force upon the life of the employee, such payments to continue within the limits fixed by the policy so long as the employee continued to be totally and permanently disabled.
It is a conceded fact that plaintiff was insured under the policy for the sum of $3,875, at which figure, in the event he became totally and permanently disabled while covered by the policy, he was entitled to receive a maximum of 97 monthly installments of benefits of $45.42 each.
This case of course proceeds upon the theory that at and prior to March 31, 1932, the date of the termination of his employment by the lead company, plaintiff had become both totally and permanently disabled within the meaning and coverage of the policy.
Tried to a jury in the circuit court of St. Francois county, a verdict was returned in favor of plaintiff, and against defendant, in the sum of $545.04, which was the full amount sued for, and represented the aggregate of twelve monthly installments of benefits found to be due under the policy. Judgment was rendered accordingly, and defendant's appeal to this court has followed in the usual course.
There are but two points urged for our consideration, the first of which has to do with the court's exclusion of certain testimony offered by defendant, and the admission of certain evidence on the part of plaintiff.
Included among defendant's witnesses was one Ben Labrot, who had been employed by the lead company on a job being done under contract between plaintiff and the lead company, pursuant to which contract it was plaintiff's duty or prerogative to exercise a measure of superintending control over the men working under him.
Labrot's testimony was that both he and plaintiff had done the same kind of work on the job, which consisted of the operation of a jack hammer or rock drill while apparently sitting suspended in which the witness referred to as a trapeze. Asked whether plaintiff had ever complained to him about not being able to do his work, Labrot stated that he had heard him "complain with his back some," but that despite his complaints plaintiff would go ahead with his work. He was then asked whether, after he himself had worked on one of those trapezes for an eight-hour shift, his own back ever hurt him. An objection to the question was interposed by plaintiff's counsel and sustained by the court, whereupon defendant's counsel offered to prove by the witness "that working with a jack hammer on a trapeze on an eight-hour shift would make any man's back tired and hurt." The objection that such offer of proof was immaterial was again sustained by the court; exception was duly taken on behalf of defendant; and now the propriety of the court's ruling is at issue on this appeal.
Plaintiff had testified that it made his back hurt to do his work for the lead company, his theory being, not that it was the peculiar nature of the work, but rather that it was his own physical impairment and disease which had produced and resulted in the hurt. Such being the case, defendant argues that it was competent for it, in order to rebut the force of plaintiff's testimony, to show that the hurt to plaintiff's back had in fact resulted from the nature of his work, and that the effect of the work was the same on all the men doing the same character of work, at the same time, in the same place, and under identical conditions.
As a very general proposition of law it might be well enough to say, just as defendant does, that evidence of what inevitably and invariably results to all of a group of men acting under identically the same conditions and circumstances in the same place and at the same time is competent to disprove the contrary claim of some one man of that group. However, it necessarily follows, even under defendant's own statement of the rule, that if material and substantial identity of conditions and circumstances is not shown as between all the men, then the reason for the rule vanishes, and evidence as to what the consequences of the work might be to the others on the job becomes incompetent upon the issue of how the one man is affected.
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