United Brothers of America and Sisters of True Love v. Kelly

• Decision Date: 26 April 1917
• Docket Number: 3 Div. 287
• Citation: 199 Ala. 678,75 So. 312
• Parties: UNITED BROTHERS OF AMERICA AND SISTERS OF TRUE LOVE v. KELLY et al.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

75 So. 312

199 Ala. 678

UNITED BROTHERS OF AMERICA AND SISTERS OF TRUE LOVE v. KELLY et al.

3 Div. 287

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 26, 1917

Appeal from Circuit Court, Montgomery County; W.W. Pearson, Judge.

Action by Henry Kelly and others against the United Brothers of America and Sisters of True Love. From judgment for plaintiffs, defendant appeals. Transferred from Court of Appeals under Acts 1911, p. 450, § 6. Affirmed.

Evans &amp Friedman, of Montgomery, for appellant.

Hill Hill, Whiting & Stern, of Montgomery, for appellees.

SAYRE J.

Suit by appellees, claiming to be the surviving next of kin of Jane Kelly, deceased, against the United Brothers of America and Sisters of True Love on a policy of insurance on the life of G. O'Bryant, deceased, in which policy the said Jane Kelly was named as beneficiary.

Appellees offered in evidence article VIII of the "constitution and by-laws" of the defendant organization. Appellant assigns for error the action of the court in overruling its objection to this evidence. In the court below the objection was that the evidence was immaterial, irrelevant, and unintelligible. The argument here is that this evidence may have led the jury to consider that appellees' claim was very modest in view of the declaration of article VIII that each member, if "financial," should be entitled to "three hundred dollars every one hundred and forty days after death to be paid to the beneficiary named on the face of the policy." Our judgment is that the next succeeding and final clause of the article, viz. "$50.00 every one hundred and forty days in an installment till same has been paid in full," in connection with the contract of insurance, which provided for the beneficiary therein named "an endowment of three hundred dollars," served perhaps to render the article intelligible to the effect that thereby defendant arranged--whether with authority or not is a matter of no consequence--the amounts and the times of payment of the installments in which the stipulated endowment was to be paid without increasing its total. At any rate conceding that this piece of evidence was immaterial irrelevant, or unintelligible, and hence that no good reason can be assigned why it should have been offered or allowed, we are clear that the record affords no ground for apprehension that the jury have been misled by it to believe that the beneficiary became entitled to "three hundred dollars every one hundred and forty days"...