Dyke v. Dyke, 12360.

• Decision Date: 01 December 1955
• Docket Number: No. 12360.,12360.
• Citation: 227 F.2d 461
• Parties: Viola DYKE, Individually and as Administratrix of the Estate of Harold Dyke, Deceased, Appellant, v. Willie Mae Keaton DYKE, United States of America, and Betty Sue Dyke, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

227 F.2d 461 (1955)

Viola DYKE, Individually and as Administratrix of the Estate of Harold Dyke, Deceased, Appellant, v. Willie Mae Keaton DYKE, United States of America, and Betty Sue Dyke, Appellee.

No. 12360.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

December 1, 1955.

Hobart F. Atkins, Knoxville, Tenn. (Judd Acuff, Hobart F. Atkins, Knoxville, Tenn., on the brief), for appellant.

John H. Doughty, Knoxville, Tenn. (Hodges & Doughty, Knoxville, Tenn., on the brief), for appellees.

Before SIMONS, Chief Judge, and MARTIN and STEWART, Circuit Judges.

MARTIN, Circuit Judge.

The issue for determination here is who is entitled to receive the death benefits of a National Service Life Insurance policy issued to a soldier who died after his discharge from Army service. The contest is between the appellant mother, originally designated as principal beneficiary, and the appellees, decedent's wife and infant daughter who were respectively the substituted principal and contingent beneficiaries of the policy. The United States is a party merely as a stakeholder.

The insured decedent was adjudged non compos mentis by the County Court of Knox County, Tennessee. On the affidavits of two doctors, he was committed to a veterans' hospital at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, after being under treatment for about a month at the Eastern State Hospital in Knoxville. Upon pronouncement by a medical board that he was mentally competent and in no need of further hospitalization, he was discharged from the Veterans' Hospital during the last part of 1949. However, the insured was never adjudged by a state court to be mentally competent.

On October 4, 1950, the insured changed the beneficiary named in his policy, making his wife principal beneficiary and his infant daughter contingent beneficiary. It was agreed by all parties upon the hearing of the cause that the sole issue for determination was whether he was mentally competent to change the beneficiary on that date. The case was tried to the United States District Judge without the intervention of a jury. Numerous witnesses testified.

The appellant mother introduced an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, Dr. Ballou, who conceded that, when the mother brought the insured to him, he was not qualified to make a psychiatric examination. The doctor said, however, that, in his opinion at the time of the call upon him, the insured was suffering from a severe case of psychosis and was not in condition to undergo a tonsillectomy. Nevertheless, the doctor said that the patient, though mentally unstable, was, in his opinion, capable of "evaluating" things.

Dr. Hill, an aged psychiatrist, testified that the insured was not mentally capable of determining the consequences of changing the beneficiary in his National Service Life Insurance policy. It was revealed that, about a year earlier, this doctor had given a sworn statement to the Field Examiner of the Veterans' Administration in direct contradiction of his testimony at the trial, for he had expressed the professional opinion that the insured was competent on October 4, 1950, to make the change of beneficiaries which he made on that date. There was introduced also another statement by Dr. Hill, made simultaneously, that the insured was mentally competent on the October, 1950, date. The district judge accorded no weight to the testimony of Dr. Hill.

Lay witnesses testified, in effect, that when he returned home from military service the insured was highly nervous and mentally abnormal. They said that he was "starry eyed" and nervous; that he was devoted to his mother before entering military service, but angry with her upon his return; likewise, in lesser degree, he changed toward his sister. Both mother and sister testified that on more than one occasion he had threatened to kill them. Some of the witnesses stated that the insured imagined the Germans were after him. His sister and her husband said that he asked his sister to poison his mother on the date he changed the beneficiary of his policy; and that he had requested them to move out of the house in which his mother was living, so that he could burn the house down while his mother was in it.

In his opinion, D.C., 122 F.Supp. 529, the trial judge commented that such conduct, if true without explanation of the circumstances, might induce the lay mind to believe that a person so behaving was mentally abnormal; but the judge narrated testimony which led to his ultimate conclusion that the insured was mentally competent when he changed the beneficiary of his insurance policy on October 4, 1950. The testimony of the Superintendent of the State Hospital for Eastern Tennessee, Dr. Peterson, a reputable and experienced psychiatrist, was reviewed. The insured had been treated from April 13 to May 12, 1949, in the state institution headed by Dr. Peterson. After being discharged, he soon entered the Veterans' Administration Hospital at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was discharged therefrom sometime in 1949 as mentally competent. He was readmitted to the Eastern Tennessee State Hospital at Knoxville in December of 1949, escaped four days later; was again admitted to that hospital on December 30, 1949, and remained there until January 9, 1950.

During his residence in the Eastern Tennessee Hospital, the insured was thoroughly and carefully examined by the medical staff, and was not isolated from other patients. He was not violent. He told Dr. Peterson that his mother wanted him to appear incompetent so that he could draw a pension; he said that she told him that if he had "fits" he would get a lot of money; that his mother had caused him to be arrested four or five times; and that he was living as a happily married man in Kentucky with his wife when his mother had caused him to be arrested and brought back to Tennessee. Dr. Peterson testified that, while the insured was a psychopathic, he was capable of knowing what he was doing. He stated that the insured's condition had not changed from the time he entered the hospital on December 8, 1949, until he was discharged as competent on January 9, 1950. Although he drank intoxicants, the insured was not considered by the doctor to be an alcoholic; but he was anti-social and not remorseful over his violations of law.

Mark Monroe, an officer employed to assist war veterans in obtaining employment, had conversed with the insured on four or five occasions prior to October 4, 1950. On each of these occasions, Dyke came to the office of Monroe to discuss his National Service Life Insurance dividend checks. Dyke was under the impression that his mother had the checks, but wanted to be certain about it. He talked with Monroe fifteen or twenty minutes on each of these visits. On October 4, 1950, the date he changed the beneficiary of his policy from his mother to his wife and daughter, he had talked to Monroe for some thirty minutes, saying that he had been released from jail. He produced a copy of an order from a Knox County court releasing his mother as guardian. The insured stated that he wanted to handle all future matters himself, and that he had been advised by Judge Frazier that, if he could not get along with his mother, he had better move from Tennessee in order to have peace. He told Monroe that he wanted to substitute his wife as principal beneficiary, instead of his mother, and to name his...