Proctor v. Metropolitan Life Insurance

Citations

• 20 Pa. Super. 523
• 1902 Pa. Super. LEXIS 270

Syllabus

<p>Insurance — Life insurance — Statement as to health — Question for jury— Act of June 23, 1885, P. L. 134.</p> <p>Under the Act of June 23, 1885, P. L. 134, a misrepresentation or untrue statement in the application, if made in good faith, does not avoid the policy unless it relate to some matter material to the risk. Ordinarily questions of good faith and materiality are for the jury, and when the materiality of a statement to the risk involved is of itself of a doubtful character, its determination should be submitted to the jury; but it was never intended by the act of 1885, nor did that act assume to change the law in oases where the matter stated was palpably and manifestly material to the risk, or where it was absolutely and visibly false.</p> <p>Where a woman in answer to a question in an application for life insurance states that she never “had cancer or any tumor,” and the defense is set up in an action upon the policy, that at the time of the application she was suffering from an intro-uterine tumor, and it appeared that the testimony of her family physician was in effect, although vague in its terms, that she had a tumor, but this testimony is contradicted in express terms by the medical examiner of the company, and it also appears that the company had knowledge of the family physician’s previous examination, and that he had suspected and declared the presence of the tumor, the case is for the jury to determine whether there had been any misrepresentation material to the risk.</p>