Johnson v. New York Life Insurance Company/Opinion of the Court

by Henry Billings Brown

United States Supreme Court

187 U.S. 491

Johnson  v.  New York Life Insurance Company

 Argued: and Submitted November 12, 1902. --- Decided: January 5, 1903

This case must be dismissed for two reasons.

1. Plaintiff relies for a reversal upon the fact that full faith and credit was not given to the law of the state of Ntw York requiring a notice of thirty days before the forfeiture of any insurance policy, which was pleaded in the case. This, however, is a title, right, privilege, or immunity claimed under the Constitution of the United States, within the 3d clause of Rev. Stat. § 709 [U.S.C.omp. Stat. 1901, p. 575], which must be 'specially set up and claimed' by the party seeking to take advantage of it. Conceding that it was unnecessary to set it up in any pleading anterior to the trial, since it could not be claimed that the right had been denied to her until the trial took place, it was clearly her duty to make the claim either on the motion for a new trial, or in the assignments of error filed in the supreme court of the state. In neither does it appear, nor is there any allusion to it in the opinion of the supreme court. It first appears in the petition for a writ of error from this court. This is clearly insufficient.

2. The supreme court of Iowa did not fail to give due faith and credit to the notice law of New York, since it was fully considered, and the decision of the state courts of New York were called to its attention and cited in its opinion. The court held that notice is required by that statute only as a basis for declaring a forfeiture or lapse of a policy for nonpayment of premium or interest, and that the law had no application, because it was a non-forfeitable policy of term insurance, which had expired by limitation before the insured died. Whether the supreme court of Iowa was correct in its construction of the applicability of the New York notice statute to this policy was immaterial, since it did not deny the full faith and credit due to the New York law, but construed it as not applying to the policy in this case. The case is covered by that of Banholzer v. New York L. Ins. Co. 178 U.S. 402, 44 L. ed. 1124, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 972, and in principle by Glenn v. Garth, 147 U.S. 360, 37 L. ed. 203, 13 Sup. Ct. Rep. 350; Lloyd v. Matthows, 155 U.S. 222, 39 L. ed. 128, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 70. To hold otherwise would render it possible to bring to this court every case wherein the defeated party claimed that the statute of another state had been construed to his detriment.

The validity of the New York statute was not called in question. The case truned upon its construction. This was not a Federal question. Commercial Bank v. Buckingham, 5 How. 317, 12 L. ed. 169; Baltimore & P. R. Co. v. Hopkins, 130 U.S. 210, 32 L. ed. 908, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 503.

The writ of error is dismissed.

Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice McKenna dissented.

Notes