Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/357

Rh sufficiently in his favor for them to accept his money from year to year while he lives, they are sufficiently favorable to him for his family to receive the company's money when he has died.

Life-insurance is too valuable and too necessary a means of provision for the family for it to be overlaid with abuses that make many men hesitate to avail themselves of its benefits; and which put a power for evil into strong hands, and make temptation to do wrong inevitable and constant.

It is said by some, whose attention has been called to this important subject, that the form of contract does not so much matter, since almost any court or jury will decide a suit against the company, and in favor of the family, in any event. This is taking it for granted that the heirs are in position, and are willing, to bring suit, and risk the reputation of the dead as well as the financial drain. But, as a matter of fact, this is not true—nor is it desirable that it should be. The rights of these corporations should be as jealously guarded by our courts as the rights of the individual; and perverted justice is a dangerous tool to handle. The man who signs an oppressive contract depending upon a court to nullify it after he is dead, is clinging to a rope of sand. The letter of the bond is what the court is bound to enforce, and every man should be sure that he signs only such as shall deal fairly with his heirs on that basis.

The following extract is from the decision of the Court of Appeals in the famous Dwight case, which is so recently decided as to most forcibly illustrate this point:

"If an insurance policy in plain and unambiguous language makes the observance of an apparently immaterial requirement the condition of a valid contract, neither courts nor juries have the right to disregard it or to construct, by implication or otherwise, a new contract in the place of that deliberately made by the parties. ... Such contracts are open to construction, ... but are subject to it only when, upon the face of the instrument, it appears that its meaning is doubtful or its language ambiguous or uncertain. ...

"An elementary writer says: 'Indeed, the very idea and purpose of construction imply a previous uncertainty as to the meaning of a contract, for when this is clear and unambiguous there is no room for construction and nothing for construction to do.'"

For this reason the Court of Appeals cited as the ground, and the only ground, for its decision against the widow, the following clause from the policy of the contesting company:

"This policy is issued, and the same is accepted by the said assured, upon the following express conditions and agreements: That the same shall cease and be null and void and of no effect ... if the representations made in the application for this policy, upon the faith of which this contract is made, shall be found in any respect untrue."

Colonel Dwight was in the habit of making large business