Pippin v. United States

• Decision Date: 19 May 1941
• Docket Number: No. 7691.,7691.
• Citation: 74 App. DC 131,121 F.2d 98
• Parties: PIPPIN v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

74 App. DC 131, 121 F.2d 98 (1941)

PIPPIN v. UNITED STATES.

No. 7691.

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Argued April 10, 1941.

Decided May 19, 1941.

Warren E. Miller, of Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Edward M. Curran, U. S. Atty., and Wilbur C. Pickett and Keith L. Seegmiller, all of Washington, D. C., for appellees.

Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and VINSON and EDGERTON, Associate Justices.

GRONER, C. J.

This is a suit brought by the guardian of an insane veteran to recover total permanent disability benefits under a contract of yearly renewable term insurance issued to the veteran during his military service in the World War. The complaint alleges that the insured became permanently and totally disabled from and after (1) January 1, 1921, or (2) September 30, 1923, or (3) May 1, 1924, or (4) February 24, 1926, when his insurance was in full force and effect by operation of law, the words "by operation of law" referring to the statutory provisions for the revival of lapsed insurance.¹

The United States answered, denying all material allegations of the complaint, and further answered that the causes of action alleged were res judicata, "in that Beulah M. Pippin, guardian of Robert W. Pippin, sued the United States in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Tennessee under this same $10,000 war risk insurance contract in which permanent and total disability was alleged from April 5, 1918. This suit was commenced on April 25, 1931, and resulted in a judgment in favor of the defendant on August 9, 1932, which judgment was affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on November 12, 1935 109 F.2d 960, at which time the same causes of action now urged in this suit were finally judicially determined". The case was tried below on the single issue whether the judgment in the former case was res judicata the matters pleaded in the present case, and that question was submitted on stipulation that the Tennessee suit was tried upon the single question whether the insured became and was permanently and totally disabled on or before May 1, 1918. On that basis, it was claimed that the insurance had been duly procured and continued in effect through the payment of premiums to the United States. The present suit is based upon the continuation in force of the insurance to subsequent dates of total disability under the provisions of the World War Veterans' Act of 1924, supra.¹ The trial court held that under the applicable rule the insured was required in the Tennessee suit to bring forward his whole case and that he could not without violating the rule present his causes of action by piecemeal in successive suits growing out of the same subject matter, as the court thought was the case. D.C., 31 F.Supp. 746.

In support of this conclusion, the court relied on Beloit v. Morgan, 7 Wall. 619, 19 L.Ed. 205, and United States v. California & Oregon Land Co., 192 U.S. 355, 24 S.Ct. 266, 48 L.Ed. 476.² In both cases the Supreme Court said where the parties, the subject matter, and the relief sought are the same, the rule is to require a plaintiff to try his whole cause of action and his whole case at one time and hence to deny him the right to split up his claim. But we think the rule inapplicable in the facts stipulated here. The former suit was confined to the single issue whether insured had paid in his own money the agreed premiums on his insurance up to May 1, 1918, and was at that time permanently and totally disabled. In the present suit, insured claims total disability as of a much later date and the continuance of the policy in effect by virtue of Acts of Congress designed to accomplish that result. Obviously, these separate causes of action were not the same, though they arose out of the same insurance policy in a controversy between the same parties. The necessary proof in the two cases must have been wholly different, and the effect of the judgment in the first case in no circumstances would have been an adjudication of some matter essential to the maintenance of the second.

We are, therefore, of opinion that the case comes under the rule announced by us in Vincent v. United States, 64 App.D.C. 178, 76 F.2d 428, in which we followed the decision of the Supreme Court in Larsen v. Northland Transp. Co., 292 U.S. 20, 25, 54 S.Ct. 584, 585, 78 L.Ed. 1096, where it is said: "The established rule in this Court is that if in a second action between the same parties, a claim or demand different from the one sued...