Reserve Life Ins. Co. v. Davis
| Decision Date | 10 October 1968 |
| Docket Number | No. 24777,24777 |
| Citation | 224 Ga. 665,164 S.E.2d 132 |
| Parties | RESERVE LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY v. Troy D. DAVIS. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Tillman, Brice, McTier & Coleman, John T. McTier, Valdosta, for appellant.
Vickers Neugent, Pearson, for appellee.
Syllabus Opinion by the Court
This case arose as an action to recover on a 'hospital room expense policy' wherein the defendant company promised to pay the insured $16 per day 'for the hospital room expense, including room, board, and general nursing care furnished by the hospital,' to the extent that such expense was actually incurred by the insured in the event he should be confined to a hospital for the purpose of treatment of any injury or disease, and 'not to exceed in the aggregate one hundred (100) days on account of any one (1) such accident or such disease.' While the policy was in force the plaintiff was confined to Battey State Hospital at Rome, Georgia, for a period of one hundred and fourteen days. After receiving notice of the insured's claim the company declined to pay the same, and plaintiff filed suit. The defendant filed five defenses to the complaint, the nature of which will sufficiently appear from the opinion. The case was tried before the judge of the superior court, sitting without a jury, who found for the plaintiff in the amount of $1,600 plus 25% penalty and $750 attorney's fees for bad faith in refusing to pay the claim. This appeal is from that judgment.
1. The hospital room expense which the plaintiff sought to recover under the provisions of the policy in question was incurred by him while he was a patient at Battey State Hospital. That institution is one of the State institutions within the provisions of the Act approved March 23, 1960 (Ga.L.1960, pp. 1138-1143) as amended by the Act approved March 3, 1966 (Ga.L.1966, pp. 143-148). Those Acts relate to the payment of cost for care of patients in State institutions and provide formulae whereby the amounts charged persons confined in such institutions may be computed. The formulae therein provided for base such charges, in general, upon the patient's ability to pay. In its fourth defense to the plaintiff's petition defendant contended that insofar as said Act as amended 'prescribes charges to and collections from patients at Georgia State institutions based upon income financial worth, family status, and insurance coverage' such Act is violative of stated provisions of the State and Federal Constitutions in that it denies to the defendant equal protection of the law. As amended by the 1966 Act the act in question does inject into the determination of a patient's ability to pay the factor of insurance coverage. Nevertheless, the Act as amended merely relates to the charges to be made to the patient or his family or others responsible for his care, and nothing in the Act as amended imposes any direct liability upon insurers of such patients. The defendant's liability to the plaintiff is dependent upon a contractual relation between it and the plaintiff and not upon any provision of the Act in question. It is fundamental that before one may attack an act of the General Assembly on the ground of its unconstitutionality he must show that its enforcement is an infringement upon some right of his as distinguished from the right of another. Hazleton v. City of Atlanta, 147 Ga. 207(4), 93 S.E. 202; Witherow v. Board of Drainage Commissions &c., 155 Ga. 476(4), 117 S.E. 329; Webb v. City of Atlanta, 186 Ga. 430, 444(5), 198 S.E. 50; Whittle v. Jones, 198 Ga. 538, 544(4), 32 S.E.2d 94; South Ga. Natural Gas. Co. v. Ga. Public Service Commission, 214 Ga. 174(1), 104 S.E.2d 97 and City of Chamblee v. Village of North Atlanta, 217 Ga. 517, 520(1c), 123 S.E.2d 663. Upon application of this principle to the facts in this case it does not appear that the defendant has any standing to draw in question the constitutionality of the 1960 Act, and the trial court did not err in overruling this defense.
2. The burden of proof was upon the plaintiff to prove that he had sustained a loss covered by the policy and to prove the amount of such loss. Atlantic Steel Co. v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co., 39 Ga.App. 680, 148 S.E. 286; Federal Life Ins. Co. v. Hurst, 43 Ga.App. 840, 846, 160 S.E. 533; ...
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