Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Parks

• Decision Date: 01 November 1923
• Docket Number: 8 Div. 588.
• Citation: 210 Ala. 261,97 So. 788
• Parties: METROPOLITAN LIFE INS. CO. v. PARKS.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

97 So. 788

210 Ala. 261

METROPOLITAN LIFE INS. CO. v. PARKS.

8 Div. 588.

Supreme Court of Alabama

November 1, 1923

Appeal from Circuit Court, Madison County; Robert C. Brickell Judge.

Action on a policy of life insurance by Bettie Parks, as administratrix of the estate of Floyd Parks, deceased against the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Transferred from Court of Appeals under Acts 1911, p. 449, § 6. Reversed and remanded.

Eyster & Eyster, of Albany, for appellant.

White &amp Watts, of Huntsville, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

Plaintiff (appellee) had judgment on a policy of insurance on the life of her husband issued by defendant. Defense was made under the general issue "with leave to offer in evidence any matter or thing that, if specially pleaded, would constitute a good defense." One condition of the policy (among others) was that "no obligation is assumed by the company prior to the date hereof, nor unless on said date the insured is alive and in sound health," and defendant undertook to show a breach of this stipulation-warranty, as we have held-that insured, at the time of the delivery of the policy, suffered from no disease which increased the risk of loss. Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Mandelbaum, 207 Ala 234, 92 So. 440.

It appeared in evidence, without dispute, that the policy in suit was dated October 27, 1919. On the next day a physician was called to see insured, who had then-if not before-taken to his bed with his last illness. Insured died November 18, 1919. Defendant offered evidence tending to show that shortly before his last illness insured had suffered from other diseases, and that at the time of the delivery of the policy, and for some years before, he suffered from chronic opium poison, or, as some of the medical witnesses stated, subacute opium poison; in other words was a drug addict, and that this caused his death. This fact it was proposed to show by a properly certified copy of the death certificate on file in the office of the county health officer of Madison county which recited the fact. This evidence was excluded by the ruling of the trial court, and the exception to this ruling constitutes the chief matter of controversy on this appeal. Our judgment is that in this the court committed error.

The question is well argued in Bozicevich v. Kenilworth Mercantile Co., 58 Utah, 458, 199 P. 406, 17 A. L. R. 346, where the text-writers are quoted, and it may serve a useful purpose to repeat what is there found:

"The law in that regard is well stated in 3 Jones, Comm Ev., § 508. The author quotes the following from Stephen on Evidence: 'An entry in any record, official book, or register kept in any state, or at sea, or in any foreign country, stating, for the purpose of being referred to by the public, a fact in issue or relevant, or deemed to be relevant thereto, and made in proper time by any person in the discharge of any duty imposed upon

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