Arnold v. Metropolitan Life Insurance

Citations

• 20 Pa. Super. 61
• 1902 Pa. Super. LEXIS 183

Syllabus

<p>Evidence — Family relationship — Personal identity.</p> <p>Common reputation in a family connection as to who are members of the family is admissible, when no superior evidence is obtainable, or in connection with superior evidence to prove pedigree, legitimacy and marriage. Personal identity must depend almost entirely upon tradition.</p> <p>In an action upon a policy of life insurance a witness may testify to statements made by the insured, where the identity of the person who made the statements with the insured depended, so far as the knowledge of the witness went, upon information which he received from a member of the insured’s family.</p> <p>Insurance — Life insurance — Evidence—Declarations.</p> <p>In an action against a life insurance company on a policy issued on the life of a father in favor of a son, declarations of the insured as to his health, made after the date of the policy, are inadmissible to avoid the policy.</p> <p>Insurance — Life insurance — Misstatements as to health.</p> <p>Where a person warrants in an application for life insurance, that he never had “disease of liver .... spitting or raising blood,” the policy is avoided where the evidence shows that shortly before the policy was issued, two physicians had treated him for liver trouble, and thatlie had consulted one of the physicians about spitting blood. In such a case it is immaterial that the spitting of blood may have resulted from the breaking of certain ribs to which the insured referred in his application.</p> <p>If the liver complaint and the spitting of the blood were of sufficient importance to induce the insured to consult a physician, they were of sufficient importance to be incorporated in the application for insurance so as to put the company upon its guard, and to enable it to make such inquiry and examination as would satisfy it in regard to the character of the disease of the liver and the spitting of blood.</p>