81 Mo. App. 627 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1899
STATEMENT OE THE CASE.
The defendant is an Illinois corporation doing business in Ohicago, Illinois, under a form of contract, whereby it agrees to pay to one, whose application accompanied by $6 cash is accepted and who shall thereafter pay $6 per month for twenty years, at the end of that period the sum of $1,400 — with a further obligation to pay to said applicant, or disburse at his request, $30 per'year as long as he keeps up such payments, and with a further stipulation that in the case of the failure of the applicant after one year to make such monthly payments, he shall have the right to demand a paid-up contract obligating the corporation to pay him at the end of the unexpired portion of the term of twenty years, that proportion of $1,400 which the number of years such payments were continued bears to twenty years, or the entire term. The contract provides for the exchange at any time of a paid-up contract so taken out for its cash value, determinable according to a method prescribed therein. Under a contract such as this, plaintiff made a cash payment and
OPINION OF THE COURT.
The foregoing statement shows that the contract between the parties was complied with by each up to the stage of the exchange for its cash value, of the paid-up contract executed by defendant to plaintiff for the sum of $210, payable seventeen years after date. As to the method of effecting this exchange the parties could not agree. Plaintiff insisted that he should receive for the surrender of said contract a sum of money which put at interest for the time the contract had to run would amount to its face value at maturity, or to express the idea of figures that he was entitled to receive $113.75, since interest thereon at five per cent for seventeen years when added to the principal, would aggregate $210. On the other hand, defendant contended that it was settled upon the surrender of said paid-up contract by paying that sum which would remain after deducting five per cent of its face value for seventeen years; or, to put its contention in figures that it would only owe plaintiff on such exchange $31.50, because five per cent of $210 is $10.50, and this multiplied by seventeen would make $178.50, which deducted from $210 would leave $31.50 as the cash value of the paid-up contract to pay