Green v. Hartford Life Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 17 October 1905
• Citation: 51 S.E. 887,139 N.C. 309
• Parties: GREEN v. HARTFORD LIFE INS. CO.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

51 S.E. 887

139 N.C. 309

GREEN v. HARTFORD LIFE INS. CO.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

October 17, 1905

Appeal from Superior Court, Craven County; W. R. Allen, Judge.

Action by Thomas A. Green against the Hartford Life Insurance Company. From a judgment in favor of defendant, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

A. D Ward, M. De W. Stephenson, and C. L. Abernethy, for appellant.

John W Hinsdale and W. W. Clark, for appellee.

CLARK C.J.

This is an action for the wrongful cancellation of a policy issued to the plaintiff in 1882 by the defendant upon the assessment plan. The defendant was incorporated in the state of Connecticut and its charter is set out in the complaint. It appears therefrom that the defendant was authorized to issue legal reserve insurance policies, as well as accident and assessment insurance, and it was provided therein that the charter might be repealed or amended at the will of the Legislature. In 1897 the defendant ceased writing assessment policies altogether, and restricted itself entirely to old line, or legal reserve, insurance, leaving the assessment members in a class to themselves, but not subdividing them as in Strauss v. Insurance Co., 126 N.C. 971, 36 S.E. 352, 54 L. R. A. 605, 83 Am. St. Rep. 699. The plaintiff became alarmed at the defendant's ceasing to write policies on the assessment plan and the increasing annual assessments, and in 1901 he ceased to pay his assessments whereupon the defendant declared his policy forfeited.

The defendant's plea of the statute of limitations, that more than three years had elapsed between the time his policy was declared forfeited and the bringing of this action, cannot avail. The statute of limitations does not run in favor of a nonresident. whether it is an individual or a corporation. Code, § 162; Alpha Mills v. Engine Co., 116 N.C. 804, 21 S.E. 917; Grist v. Williams, 111 N.C. 53, 15 S.E. 889, 32 Am. St. Rep. 782. What is said at the conclusion of the opinion in Williams v. B. & L. Asso., 131 N. C., at page 270, 42 S. E., at page 608, is in no wise an intimation that chapter 5, p. 66, Laws 1901, or chapter 54, § 62 (3), p. 175, Laws 1899, which authorizes service of summons against nonresident insurance companies upon the Commissioner of Insurance, in any way abrogates or affects the suspension of the running of the statute in such cases. It merely holds that by reason of those statutes summons can hereafter be so readily and promptly served that no question as to the bar from the lapse of time is likely to arise; not that it will be a bar, if presented. That service can thus be had upon a nonresident corporation may be a reason why the General Assembly should amend section 162 of the Code, so as to set the statute running in such cases, but it has not done so and the courts cannot.

But we agree with his honor below in his granting the judgment of nonsuit. The plaintiff failed to show that his assessments were increased by reason of the defendant's ceasing to write assessment insurance, or that he was in any wise injured thereby. The charter of the defendant authorized it to issue the different kinds of policy, and there is nothing in the charter or in the plaintiff's policy which required the defendant to continue writing assessment insurance after the company should think it advisable to discontinue that kind of insurance. The annual premiums in assessment companies necessarily grow larger with age of the assured and the reluctance of young men to come in to prevent by their premiums the increase of rates which come to an aging and diminishing class. This is the peculiar weakness of that particular kind of insurance. The plaintiff had no right, under its contract or under the defendant's charter, to require it to continue to struggle for "new blood," as it is called, to keep down his assessments. His reliance must be upon the ""safety fund" created out of the excess of premiums, invested for the purpose of making good the payment of policies, which, in a dwindling class, would otherwise require assessments too heavy to be carried solely by the survivors. In Wright v Insurance Co., 193 U.S. 657, 24 S.Ct. 549, 48 L.Ed. 832, the court sustained the validity of a statute which authorized assessment companies to convert themselves into old line or legal reserve companies; but here the defendant in its original charter had the right to issue either kind of policy, and there was no provision requiring it to continue to issue both. In Polk v. Life Asso. (C. C.) 137 F....