54 Ga. App. 590 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1936
Lula Curry sued Washington National Insurance Company to recover for a disability caused from parafysis, and alleged as due under an accident and health policy dated January 18, 1935, containing the following provisions: The company, “in consideration of the statements in the application herefor, copy of which is endorsed hereon, and which is made a material part hereof, and the payment in advance of the initial premium of $5, does hereby insure Lula Curry . . against loss resulting directly and independently of all other causes from bodily disease or illness contracted and having its beginning after thirty days subsequent to date of policy. . . No statements made by the applicant for insurance not included herein shall avoid the policy or be
On the trial the plaintiff testified that she thought she was in good health when the policy was delivered to her; that she had signed the application with her mark, not being able to read or write, but she did not know what was in the application; that she told the agents who wrote the application that a doctor had told her several years previously that she had high blood pressure; that one of the defendant’s agents examined and felt of a goitre on her neck, and questioned her about it, and she told him that it bothered her only at certain times; and that she had paid the pre
The controlling question is whether the knowledge of the defendant’s agents that the plaintiff had high blood pressure at the time of the application should be imputed to the defendant and render the policy binding, notwithstanding the provision that it would not take effect in case the insured was not in good health at the time the policy was delivered. Ordinarily knowledge of an agent of a fact affecting the risk is imputed to the company, and it is held to have waived a condition which prevents the insurance from taking effect, if it issued the policy after knowing that the insured was not at the time in good health. But where, as in this case, the application for the policy has the special provision above quoted, the company is not chargeable with notice of false answers fraudulently inserted in the application by its agent. National Accident & Health Ins. Co. v. Davis, 179 Ga. 595 (176 S. E. 387). In the case just cited the applicant for insurance was not an illiterate. In the present case the applicant was unable to read or write, but made no effort to have the application read or otherwise explained to her. An illiterate person who signs a paper without knowing what is in it is generally bound by it. 7 Elliott on Contracts, 192, § 110, n. 7; 7 Williston on Contracts, 51, § 35. It is evident from the plaintiff’s testimony that she knew that she was signing an application for an insurance policy, and she only claims ignorance as to its particular provisions. Besides, she ac
A number of allegations were stricken from the petition on special demurrer on the grounds of irrelevance and immateriality. These demurrers were properly sustained. If all the stricken allegations had been left in the petition, the result of the case would not have been different. Many of those allegations are insisted on by the plaintiff as showing fraud by the agents in the procurement of the policy. But the suit was brought, not to avoid the policy for fraud, but to enforce it. Various grounds of the motion for new trial set up that the court erred in rejecting testimony in support of the allegations which had been stricken on special demurrer. As the court had already decided that the matters in question were irrelevant and immaterial, it was not error to overrule these grounds of the motion for new trial. A spécial ground of the motion claimed error by the court in disallowing an amendment to the petition, which charged: “Plaintiff shows that when the said agents of the defendant insurance company solicited the policy sued on as set out above, said agents were put on notice verbally by the plaintiff that the plaintiff had some years before January, 1935, had high blood pressure.” From what has been said it follows that the court did not err in disallowing this amendment.
Judgment affirmed.