Insurance Company v. Foley/Opinion of the Court

by Stephen Johnson Field

United States Supreme Court

105 U.S. 350

Insurance Company  v.  Foley

The instruction requested by the defendant, treating it as applicable to the case at bar, and not as containing a mere abstract proposition of law, is open to several objections.

In the first place, it assumes that there was a difference in the sources of knowledge of the witnesses in the case; which was not the fact. All of them testified from their observation of the conduct of the deceased; and the jury would properly give weight to the testimony, not according to the positiveness of the averments of the witnesses as to their knowledge, but, other considerations being equal, according to their opportunities of observation of the deceased's conduct, and the manner in which those opportunities had been improved. No witness testified, from his own knowledge, that the deceased was of intemperate habits at the time he applied for the insurance, and that he had always been so. No instruction should be given which thus assumes, as a matter of fact, that which is not conceded or established by uncontradicted proof. New Jersey Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Baker, 94 U.S. 610.

In the second place, the instruction requested does not present the law with entire accuracy. Whether the testimony of the persons alleging knowledge is entitled to greater consideration than that of persons asserting opinions, mainly depends upon the subjects with respect to which the testimony is given. If the subject be, as in this case, the habits of a party, affirmations of knowledge will be weighed with reference to the opportunities of the witnesses to obtain the knowledge they assert. If they are not intimate with him, and see him only occasionally, the assertion of knowledge of his habits, however strong, will amount to no more than the assertion of an opinion, and will not be entitled to equal weight with less positive testimony of other witnesses founded upon a more extended acquaintance.

In the third place, the instruction requested omits the consideration of the character of the witnesses, as an element in determining the weight to be given to their testimony. The force of testimony often depends as much upon the intelligence and judgment of the witnesses, disclosed by their manner of testifying, as upon confidence in their general veracity.

The charge given by the court, as stated above, correctly presented the law of the case. The question was as to the habits of the insured. His occasional use of intoxicating liquors did not render him a man of intemperate habits, nor would an exceptional case of excess justify the application of this character to hom. An attack of delirium tremens may sometimes follow a single excessive indulgence. Ray, in his treatise on Medical Jurisprudence, says, that, though it most commonly occurs in habitual drinkers, after a few days of total abstinence from spirituous liquors, it may be the immediate effect of an excess or series of excesses in those who are not habitually intemperate as well as in those who are. Sect. 545. In the American Encyclopaedia, under the head of 'Delirium Tremens,' it is stated that it 'sometimes makes its appearance in consequence of a single debauch;' though commonly it is the result of protracted or long-continued intemperance. Vol. v. p. 782.

When we speak of the habits of a person, we refer to his customary conduct, to pursue which he has acquired a tendency, from frequent repetition of the same acts. It would be incorrect to say that a man has a habit of anything from a single act. A habit of early rising, for example, could not be affirmed of one because he was once seen on the streets in the morning before the sun had risen; nor could intemperate habits be imputed to him because his appearance and actions on that occasion might indicate a night of excessive indulgence. The court did not, therefore, err in instructing the jury that if the habits of the insured, 'in the usual, ordinary, and everyday routine of his life, were temperate,' the representations made are not untrue, within the meaning of the policy, although he may have had an attack of delirium tremens from an exceptional over-indulgence. It could not have been contemplated from the language used in the policy that it should become void for an occasional excess by the insured, but only when such excess had by frequent repetitions become a habit. And the testimony of the witnesses, who had been intimate with him for years, and knew his general habits, may well have satisfied the jury that, whatever excesses he may at times have committed, he was not habitually intemperate.

Judgment affirmed.

Notes