Johnson v. Maine & N. B. Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 23 February 1891
• Parties: JOHNSON v. MAINE & N. B. INS. CO.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

22 A. 107

83 Me. 182

JOHNSON

v. MAINE & N. B. INS. CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Feb. 23, 1891.

(Official.)

Report from supreme judicial court, Penobscot county.

This was an action brought by the plaintiff, as one of the beneficiaries named in a certificate or policy of life insurance issued by the defendants, to recover the money payable to him after the death of the insured, who was his half-brother. Plea was the general issue, with brief statement alleging fraud, and a breach of warranty by the insured in his application. The case is stated in the opinion.

A. W. Paine, for plaintiff.

Baker, Baker & Cornish, for defendant.

EMERY, J. On report. The material facts established by the admissions and evidence are these: James H. Smith and the Maine & New Brunswick Insurance Company made a contract of insurance upon the life of Smith by the company, partly payable upon Smith's death to the plaintiff, his half-brother. This contract was evidenced by two written instruments,—one, called the "application," signed by Smith; the other, called the "policy," signed by the proper officers of the company. All the terms and conditions of the contract were embraced in these two writings.

The application contained various statements, and questions and answers thereto, and at the end were the following certificates signed by the applicant, Smith.

(1) "I have verified the foregoing answers and statements, and find them to be full, complete, and true. I do also adopt as my own, whether written by me or not, each foregoing statement, representation, and answer, and I agree that they are all material. * * *"

(2) "I do hereby declare and warrant that the foregoing answers and statements are full, complete, and true; and I agree that this declaration and warranty, together with the preceding agreements, shall form the basis of the contract between the undersigned and the Maine and New Brunswick Insurance Company, and are offered to said company by me as a consideration of the contract applied for, and are hereby made a part of the certificate to be issued on this application; and if there be any concealment, misrepresentation, or false statement, or statement not true, made herein, then the certificates to be issued hereon shall be null and void. * * *"

The policy (or certificate) contained a stipulation that it was issued upon the condition that the statements and declarations made in the application were true, and that the application was a part of, and the basis of, the contract of insurance.

In the application, among others, was the following question and answer:

No. 16. "Have either of your parents, brothers, or sisters ever had insanity, consumption, chronic cough, or any scrofulous, constitutional, or hereditary disease?

"Answer. No."

At the time of making this application, however, (July 8, 1888,) the applicant Smith had a brother, John T. Smith, who was then an inmate of the Central Lunatic Asylum, Va., having been committed to that asylum in 1880. He was a monomaniac, made so by religious excitement. He was quiet, peaceable, and harmless. He was employed daily at the pump-house, assisting the fireman, and did other light work. His mental disease was of the class called by physicians "chronic dementia." Hisphysical health was good, and, so far as appears, was unaffected by his mental condition.

James H. Smith, the applicant, had full knowledge of the mental condition of his brother John, as above described, (so far as a person unskilled in mental disease would observe or appreciate it,) at the time of the making of this contract upon his own life, but made no other statement about it in his application than his above answer to question No. 16.

James H. Smith, the applicant, died March 16, 1889, of acute mania, in the Westboro' (Massachusetts) Insane Hospital, to which he had been committed February 25, 1889. While in the hospital he was noisy, incoherent, untidy, destructive, and delirious. The immediate cause of his death was "exhaustion of acute mania. "The plaintiff, a beneficiary under the policy, having observed all the legal preliminaries, brought this action against the company to recover the amount specified in the policy to be paid to him upon the death of the insured. The defendant company defend the action, contending, under the proper pleadings, that the applicant's negative answer to question No. 16 in the application, and above quoted, was erroneous; and that such error of answer or statement rendered the contract void, under the express stipulations in the application and policy. The plaintiff opposes this contention of the company, with various counter-propositions, which we now proceed to consider.

1. The plaintiff contends, first, that the answer was not in fact erroneous; that the applicant's brother John was not insane in the sense in which the word "insanity" was used in question No. 16. His argument is that the word "insanity," used in that connection in an application for life insurance, only means such forms of insanity as affect physical health, and tend to shorten physical life, and does not include in its meaning a case of chronic dementia, where the patient is quiet and harmless, and in physical good health.

Etymologically, insanity signifies unsoundness; lexically, it signifies unsoundness of mind, or derangement of the intellect. Medical science, with its usual zeal, has deeply investigated the various forms, symptoms, causes, results, and manifestations of mental unsoundness or disease, and has discovered numerous kinds of such diseases, to which it has given appropriate technical names. Dr. Hammond, (late surgeon general United States army,) for instance, classifies these kinds into 7 classes, and 33 subclasses, (not claiming, however, this to be a natural classification.) Dementia and mania are both specified in this classification. But, however necessary such an analysis and classification of mental diseases maybe to the science of medicine, they are...