Woodward v. United States

• Decision Date: 16 June 1948
• Docket Number: No. 13648.,13648.
• Parties: WOODWARD v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

167 F.2d 774 (1948)

WOODWARD v. UNITED STATES.

No. 13648.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

May 12, 1948.

Rehearing Denied June 16, 1948.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Louren G. Davidson, of Springfield, Mo., and Claude T. Wood, of Richland, Mo., for appellant.

Sam M. Wear, U. S. Atty. and Earl A. Grimes, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Kansas City, Mo., H. G. Morison, Asst. Atty. Gen., and D. Vance Swann and Thomas E. Walsh, Attys., Dept. of Justice, both of Washington, D. C., for United States, appellee.

Flavius B. Freeman, of Springfield, Mo. (Neale, Newman, Neale, Freeman & Wampler, of Springfield, Mo., on the brief), for interpleader, appellee.

Before SANBORN, JOHNSEN, and COLLET, Circuit Judges.

SANBORN, Circuit Judge.

This controversy concerns the right to the proceeds of a $10,000 policy of National Service Life Insurance issued by the United States to Evelyn C. Haizlip, a service woman, who died February 17, 1945. LeRoy Haizlip, the husband of the insured, was the original beneficiary named in the policy. Shortly prior to her death, the insured changed the beneficiary to the appellant, describing him as her brother. As plaintiff, he brought this action upon the policy. He was, concededly, a brother of the insured through adoption, but the Government in its answer denied that he was within the permitted class of beneficiaries specified in the National Service Life Insurance Act of 1940, 38 U.S.C.A. § 801 et seq. (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), and asserted that LeRoy Haizlip, the husband of the insured, had filed a claim for the insurance benefits. LeRoy Haizlip was thereupon brought into the case as an adverse claimant. He asserted that the insured's attempt to change the beneficiary was void under the Act. The assertions of the Government and the husband that the plaintiff was not entitled to the proceeds of the policy were based upon the claim that, by § 602(g) of the Act, 54 Stat. 1008, 1010, as amended July 11, 1942, 56 Stat. 657, 659, 38 U.S.C.A. § 802 (g), the plaintiff was excluded from the permitted class of beneficiaries.

Section 602(g) of the Act, as amended in 1942, reads as follows: "The insurance shall be payable only to a widow, widower, child (including a stepchild or an illegitimate child if designated as beneficiary by the insured), parent, brother or sister of the insured. The insured shall have the right to designate the beneficiary or beneficiaries of the insurance, but only within the classes herein provided, and shall, subject to regulations, at all times have the right to change the beneficiary or beneficiaries of such insurance without the consent of such beneficiary or beneficiaries but only within the classes herein provided."

After a pre-trial conference, the District Court ruled that the term "brother" as used in the applicable statute includes a brother by the half blood as well as by the whole blood, but does not include a brother through adoption. Since the plaintiff had asserted that he was a brother of the insured by the half blood, while her husband denied that there was any blood relationship between the insured and the plaintiff, that issue of fact was tried to a jury. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the insured's husband. Under the instructions of the court, the verdict was a determination that the plaintiff was not by blood a half brother of the insured. The court entered judgment in favor of LeRoy Haizlip upon the verdict, and the plaintiff has appealed. He contends that, under the evidence, he was entitled to judgment as a matter of law and that the court erred in its rulings on evidence and with respect to its instructions to the jury.

It is unnecessary to state the facts in detail. The insured was born May 2, 1922, at the Florence Crittenton Home in Kansas City, Missouri. Her mother was Lela Morris, of Saltillo, Tennessee, an unmarried woman twenty-five years of age. In the latter part of 1920, Lela Morris had gone to Savannah, Tennessee, to keep house for a family named Bennett. The oldest son was "Charley" Bennett. Lela Morris left in January, 1922, because she was pregnant. She was married in 1927 to James B. Woodward, a resident of Missouri, the father of the plaintiff. In that year, James B. Woodward adopted the insured as his child, with her mother's consent. The insured's name was changed from Evelyn Morris to Evelyn Woodward at the time of her adoption. Her mother died in 1936. The insured was married to LeRoy Haizlip December 15, 1939. She and her husband both entered the armed services during the late War. James B. Woodward died in June, 1945, at the age of eighty or eighty-one.

The plaintiff, Ernest R. Woodward, of Springfield, Missouri, was born August 1, 1890, in Laclede County, Missouri, the son of James B. Woodward and Lizzie Cunningham Woodward. The parents of the plaintiff were divorced in 1916 or 1917. Thereafter the plaintiff's mother lived with him. The evidence of the plaintiff at the trial tended to prove that James B. Woodward was the natural as well as the father through adoption of the insured. The evidence adduced on behalf of the insured's husband tended to show that James B. Woodward was not the natural father of the insured, but was only her father through adoption.

The first question for consideration involves the proper construction of the term "brother" as used in § 602(g) of the Act.

The plaintiff contends that the term includes a brother through adoption as well as a half brother by blood. LeRoy Haizlip asserts that the term includes neither a half brother by blood nor a brother through adoption. The United States, which is interested in a proper interpretation of the term, is of the opinion that — as the District Court decided — a brother of the whole or of the half blood is included, but that a brother through adoption is not.

By the provisions of § 602(g) of the Act, as originally approved October 8, 1940, 54 Stat. 1008, 1010, 38 U.S.C.A. § 802(g), the permitted class of beneficiaries included "a widow, widower, child (including a stepchild or an illegitimate child if designated as beneficiary by the insured), parent (including person in loco parentis if designated as beneficiary by the insured), brother or sister of the insured." Section 601(e) of the Act provided that the term "child" includes an adopted child. By the amendatory Act of July 11, 1942, Congress struck out, in § 602(g), the words appearing in parenthesis, following the word "parent", namely, "(including person in loco parentis if designated as beneficiary by the insured)"; and added, at the end of § 601, a subsection (f) reading as follows: "The terms `parent', `father', and `mother' include a father, mother, father through adoption, mother through adoption, and persons who have stood in loco parentis to a member of the military or naval forces at any time prior to entry into active service for a period of not less than one year." Therefore, the only relatives through adoption who could, by the express terms of the Act, be beneficiaries of an insured were a child, a mother, and a father.

An Administrator's Decision, Veterans Administration, No. 514, of March 10, 1943, ruled that "brothers and sisters through adoption are not included within the term `brothers and sisters of the insured' in section 602(h) (3) (D), National Service Life Insurance Act * * *." This was equivalent to ruling that brothers and sisters through adoption were not within the class specified in § 602(g) of the Act as amended in 1942.

In Droney v. United States, D.C., D.C., 59 F.Supp. 154, decided in 1945, it was held that the terms "brother" and "sister" of the insured as used in § 602(g) of the Act apply only to a blood brother or sister and do not include brothers or sisters through adoption. To the same effect is the unreported decision in Beach v. United States, D.C., N.D. Ohio, filed April 5, 1946,¹ and Carpenter v. United States, D.C.W.D.Pa., 72 F.Supp. 510. Apparently, in no other cases has the question yet arisen.

The accepted meaning of the term "brother" as given by the dictionaries is: "A male relative, a son of the same parents or parent" — The New Century Dictionary; "A male considered in his relation to another having the same parents (whole brother), or one parent only in common (half brother)" — Webster's Collegiate Dictionary; "A male person, or, by extension, a male animal, considered in his relation to another person, or animal, having the same parents (whole brother), or one parent only in common (half brother)" — Webster's International Dictionary. "One person is a brother `of the whole blood' to another, the former being a male, when both are born from the same father and mother. He is a brother `of the half blood' to that other (or half brother) when the two are born to the same father by different mothers or by the same mother to different fathers. * * * The phrase `brothers and sisters' as used in statutes of descent and in inheritance tax statutes is commonly construed to include half brothers and half sisters." Black's Law Dictionary, Third Edition, p. 253-254. See, also, Words and Phrases, Perm.Ed., Vol. 5, p. 845.

The plaintiff argues: (1) that in using the term "brother" in § 602(g) of the Act, without defining the term, Congress will be presumed to have inferentially adopted the definitions of the term found in the World War Veterans' Act of 1924, 43 Stat. 607, 608, 38 U.S.C.A. § 424(6) and (7), which include a brother through adoption; (2) that, in the absence of a Congressional definition of the term "brother" as used in the National Service Life Insurance Act of 1940 (as amended), Missouri law governs, and since the plaintiff became, through adoption, a full brother of the insured under Missouri law, he was within the permitted class of beneficiaries specified in § 602(g), (citing Seaboard Air Line Railway v. Kenney, 240 U.S. 489, 36 S.Ct. 458, 60 L.Ed. 762; Poff v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co., 327 U.S. 399, 66...