MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY
v.
SEARS
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The Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision in a dispute over whether an insurance policy had lapsed or been abandoned. The Court held that when an insured party defaulted on payments and later declined to continue the policy after the insurance company's application for restoration, the parties' mutual agreement to abandon the contract was conclusive and binding, regardless of New York's insurance statute provisions. The judgment was reversed and remanded with instructions to overrule the defendant's demurrer.
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Mr. Justice Brewer,
after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
In view of what has been already decided in the case of Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Phinney, Executrix, ante, 327, it is needless to do more than note the fact that, as shown by the answer, after the insured had once defaulted in May, 1892, and a second default had occurred in May, 1893, application was made to him by the company, through its agents, to restore the policy, and that he declined to make any further payments or to continue the policy, and elected to have it terminated, which election was accepted by the company, and the parties to the contract treated it thereafter as abandoned. As we held in the prior case, there is nothing in the New York statute (if controlling at all) to prevent the parties from dealing with that as any other contract, and if they chose to abandon it, that action is conclusive.
The judgments of the Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit and of the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Washington are reversed and the case remanded to the latter court, with instructions to overrule the demurrer to defendants answer. Mr. Justice Peckham did not sit in the hearing and took no part in the decision of this case.
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Kimbal v. THE Travelers Ins. Co., 151 Fla. 786 (Fla. 1942)…es is a conclusive showing that the employer did not intend to pay additional premiums or avail himself of the privileges of the grace period. See Davis v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 161 Tenn. 655, 32 S.W. (2nd) 1034; Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Sears, 178 U.S. 345, 44 L. Ed. 1096, 20 Sup. Ct. 912; Wolfberg v. State Mutual Life Assur. Co., 36 Fed. (2nd) 171. The contract of - insurance was in writing and before the employer, the insured and the beneficiary, and thé parties are charged, by law, with a knowledge…
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Mut. Life Ins. Co. of N.Y. v. Cohen, 179 U.S. 262 (U.S. 1900)…. In the opinion we referred to the fact that there was a primary question of the applicability of a statute of the State of New York, but deemed it unnecessary to decide it. That decision was followed by the cases of the same company against Sears, 178 U. S. 345; against Hill, 178 U. S. 347; against Allen, 178 U. S. 351. All of which cases were disposed of in like manner. The primary question noticed but not decided in those cases is' distinctly and solely presented in this. The insurance policy contained…
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Swayze v. Mut. Life Ins. Co. of N.Y. (D. Kan. 1929)…with notice laws of the same import as the Kansas statute, holding that the statute does not prevent a mutual abandonment of the contract. Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Phinney, 178 U. S. 327, 20 S. Ct. 906, 44 L. Ed. 1088; Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Sears, 178 U. S. 345, 20 S. Ct. 912, 44 L. Ed. 1096; Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Hill, 178 U. S. 347, 20 S. Ct. 914, 44 L. Ed. 1097; Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Allen, 178 U. S. 351, 20 S. Ct. 913, 44 L. Ed. 1098. Under the agreed facts in this ease I find that the parties aba…1 / 2