Brown v. Mut. Reserve Fund Life Ass'n
| Decision Date | 07 February 1907 |
| Citation | 224 Ill. 576,79 N.E. 949 |
| Parties | BROWN v. MUTUAL RESERVE FUND LIFE ASS'N. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Appellate Court, First District.
Action by Thomas R. Brown against Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association. From a judgment of the Appellate Court affirming a judgment in favor of defendant, plaintiff appeals. Reversed and remanded.
Louis E. Hart, for appellant.
Newman, Northrup, Levinson & Becker and C. E. Cleveland, for appellee.
The proceeding below was assumpsit, filed in the superior court of Cook county against the appellee company, and the declaration counted upon two beneficiary certificates issued to one Thomas Brown by the Northwestern Life Assurance Company. Upon hearing in the trial court, at the close of the evidence for the plaintiff (appellant here) the court gave a peremptory instruction to the jury directing them to find for the defendant, and judgment was entered in accordance with said instruction. An appeal was perfected to the Appellate Court for the First District, where the judgment of the superior court was affirmed, and this further appeal brings the record before us for review.
The evidence discloses that one Thomas Brown, father of appellant, in April, 1899, held two benefit certificates issued by the Northwestern Life Assurance Company, in which appellant was the beneficiary. About that time a misunderstanding arose between the assured and said Northwestern Life Assurance Company as to the amount due from the assured on his assessments, and said assured declined to pay the amount of assessments demanded, and did not pay the same and never paid any assessment thereafter. Nearly a year and a half after the assured declined to pay the assessments demanded of him by the said Northwestern Life Assurance Company the said company entered into a contract with the appellee association by which the appellee association was to reinsure certain risks of the Northwestern Life Assurance Company. This contract or agreement on the part of the two was approved at a meeting of the members of the Northwestern Life Assurance Company in September, 1900, by a two-thirds vote of the members thereof. In January, 1902, 16 months after the agreement of reinsurance was approved by the members of the Northwestern Life Assurance Company, the assured died, but up to that time he had not paid any of the assessments levied by the Northwestern Life Assurance Company.
As before stated. the contracts or benefit certificates sued on were not those of the appellee association with the assured, but were contracts of insurance issued by the Northwestern Life Assurance Company. The liability alleged against the appellee association was based on its...
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