Civil ACTION, tried before Winston, J., at the Fall Term, 1894, of the Superior Court of Rutherford County, upon a case agreed, from which it appeared that the plaintiff, Mary Alice Simpson, is the widow of Robert Simpson, deceased, and the other plaintiffs are his children; that Robert Simpson on the 15th day of May, 1875, and also on the 15th day of May, 1876, insured his life for the sum of $1,000 in the North Carolina State Life Insurance Company, and received from said…
Key passage — most relied on by later courts
““Tite quality of incontestability could with no propriety be predicated to this contract of insurance if it was still allowed to the insurer to dispute its liability to the insured for the ‘amount of the insurance.’ * * * If this can be done, the policy is certainly not incontestable.””
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1894-09-05
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently September 1946
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 9 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
¶1MACRAE, J., dissents.
The defendant agreed "that all restrictions of travel, occupation or residence expressed in the original policy" should be waived. By this stipulation the fourth section of the original policy was in effect stricken out and forms no part of the contract between these parties.
¶2It further agreed that the policy should be from the date of that agreement " incontestable"; and, as if to emphasize this promise, it added that when the policy became a claim "the amount of insurance" should be paid to the beneficiary immediately upon approval of proof of death. If the policy had lapsed or been discontinued, as by nonpayment of the stated premium, it would not, upon the death of Robert Simpson, have become a claim against the defendant insurer. It was in full force at the time of that death and has become "a claim," and the plaintiff demands the "amount of insurance." What is meant by "the amount of insurance"? Certainly the sum for which the life was insured — the sum which, under the contract, was to be paid to the plaintiff in case of her husband's death as indemnity for her loss. Those words cannot, we think, be construed to mean "the net value of the policy," a sum which, by the terms of the original contract, was to be paid under certain circumstances in lieu of the amount of insurance, to wit, $2,000. This construction is consonant with the preceding provision that the policy should be "incontestable." The quality of incontestability could with no propriety be predicated on this contract of insurance if it was still allowed to the insurer to dispute its liability to the insured for the "amount of the insurance," upon the ground that the death was caused "by the use of intoxicating liquor or opium, or from the violation of law, or any condition or agreement contained in this policy, or the application upon which this policy is issued." And yet, if it may now, under its contract, *273
contest with this beneficiary as to its liability for the amount of insurance, upon the allegation that the deceased committed suicide, it may contest with beneficiaries under other similar contracts upon (397) the grounds enumerated above. If this can be done, the policy is certainly not incontestable, for the whole field of dispute would then be open to the defendant.
¶3In Bliss Life Insurance (2d Ed., p. 428) the word "indisputable" is used to designate the quality here expressed by the word "incontestable." In a note on page 431 that author remarks: "Lord Campbell says (Wheelton v.Hardisty, 8 E. B. 232, 283) that a promise that all assurances shall be unquestionable means indisputable, and amounts to an absolute guaranty that no objection shall be taken to defeat the policy on the death of the person whose life is insured, subject to the implied exception of personal fraud, which will vitiate the contract." This policy became, by virtue of the defendant's agreement, what Mr. Bliss, on page 432, denominates "a really indisputable policy," which should be "subject to no condition whatever."
