Connell v. Metropolitan Life Insurance

Citations

• 16 Pa. Super. 520
• 1901 Pa. Super. LEXIS 104

Syllabus

<p>Insurance — rLife insurance — Application detached from policy — Act of May 11, 1881, P. L. 20.</p> <p>In an action upon a policy of life insurance where it appears that the policy does not designate the beneficiary, the insured may introduce in evidence the application, to show the beneficiary, although the application is detached from the policy, but this will not enable the insurance company to lake advantage of the warranties contained in the application contrary to the Act of May 11, 1881, P. L. 20.</p> <p>Life insurance — Covenants in warranties in the policy.</p> <p>The Act of June 23, 1885, P. L. 134, relating “ to warranties in the application for life insurance policies,” has no application to the express covenants of the policy itself, not directly dependent upon such warranties.</p> <p>A policy of life insurance contained this provision: “ This form of policy is issued upon an application which omits the warranty usually contained in applications, and the policy contains the entire agreement between the company and the insured.” The application was not attached to the policy. The policy itself provided that it should be void if the insured “has had before this date any pulmonary disease or chronic bronchitis or cancer, or disease of the heart, liver or kidneys.” The defense was that at the time of the issuance of the policy the insured had Bright’s disease, and that she continued to suffer from and died of that disease. This was supported by evidence. Held (1) that the covenant in the policy was an unequivocal and absolute covenant; (2) that whether the policy was void was dependent upon actual conditions, past or present, and not upon the knowledge of these conditions possessed by the parties; (3) that the existence of the disease was a fact to be established by competent evidence, and the burden was upon the defendant.</p>