14 A.2d 279 | Pa. | 1940
Frank Cybuck, a man without either property or income, was occasionally employed to tend the furnace in a small apartment house belonging to plaintiff Joseph Werenzinski and he also did odd jobs around the place, sleeping in one of the rooms occupied by plaintiff's family or in the basement. He was found one evening lying in front of the boilers so horribly burned that he died immediately thereafter.
Four policies of insurance were issued by defendant on the life of Cybuck payable to his estate, but in each case the policy was assigned some months thereafter to plaintiff. At the trial of the suit brought on these policies defendant contended that plaintiff was not entitled to recover because he had no insurable interest in Cybuck's life. The learned trial judge charged the jury that the controlling question was as to who paid the premiums after the making of the assignments; if they were paid by plaintiff the policies would then represent wagering contracts and plaintiff would be barred from recovery, but if the insured continued to pay the premiums the verdict should be for plaintiff even though admittedly he had no insurable interest in Cybuck's life. The jury found for defendant (as another jury had done on a previous trial of the case), but the court granted *85 plaintiff a new trial solely on the ground that "the question of whether the assignments were made in good faith and not as a mere cloak or cover for the procuring of insurance by the plaintiff who was without an insurable interest should have been submitted to and passed upon by the jury." Defendant appeals from the granting of the new trial, plaintiff from the refusal of the court to enter judgment in his favor n. o. v.
The court was in error in granting a new trial. The charge of the trial judge correctly defined the issue, and the verdict should have been upheld. There was ample evidence to warrant the conclusion, which the jury must have reached, that plaintiff, at least after becoming the assignee of the policies, paid the premiums, and if this was so the law would not permit plaintiff to recover, irrespective of any question of good faith.
There are two propositions so well established both by decision and statute that there can be no doubt in regard to them. The first is that a person may take out a policy of insurance on his own life and name as beneficiary whomsoever he pleases, regardless of whether or not such beneficiary has an insurable interest, or, having taken out a policy, he may assign it to one without an insurable interest, provided, in either event, the insured continues at all times to pay the premiums; under such circumstances no question arises of a wagering contract obnoxious to public policy: Scott v. Dickson,
A more doubtful situation, from the legal standpoint, exists when a policy of insurance taken out by one on his own life, and thus valid in its inception, is subsequently assigned by the insured to a person having no insurable interest and the assignee thereafter pays the premiums. If such assignment is merely a subterfuge, planned or contemplated when the policy was issued, to enable the assignee thereby to accomplish what he could not have done directly, namely, to obtain insurance on a life wherein he had no insurable interest, it would not be sustainable. But where the assignment is not in execution of such a preexisting purpose to circumvent the law, but arises from subsequent happenings, may the assignee recover on the policy? There has been a wealth of discussion pro and con on this subject in judicial opinions and in textbooks, and there is a sharp division of authority. In the great majority of jurisdictions it is held that such an assignment is valid, even though the assignee pays the premiums: see 2 Joyce on the Law of Insurance, 2d ed., 2009, section 919; 1 Cooley's Briefs on Insurance, 2d ed., 349 et seq.; 6 Couch, Cyclopedia of Insurance Law, 5197, et seq., section 1458(e). The best arguments in support of this view are to be found inGrigsby v. Russell,
As against this formidable array of authorities plaintiff relies upon two decisions of the Superior Court, In re Estateof Vincent Szymanski, Deceased,
In the Pashuck case the beneficiary paid the premiums, but there was evidence that she was a creditor of the insured. The court, in a decision in her favor, mistakenly relied upon a dictum in the opinion in First National Bank of Glen Campbellv. Burnside National Bank,
Since the instructions of the learned trial judge to the jury correctly expressed the law, the court was in error in granting a new trial. To have injected into the case the issue of "good faith," which the court below now thinks should have been done, would have been improper in the light of the well-established law of this Commonwealth.
The order granting a new trial is reversed, and the record is remitted with directions to enter judgment upon the verdict in favor of defendant.