LAWSUIT OB LEGACY. 343 



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 pro- 

 vision 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 im- 

 portant subject, that the form of contract does not so much matter, 

 since almost any court or jury will decide a suit against the com- 

 pany, 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 Ap- 

 peals in the famous D wight 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 

 6hall cease and be null and void and of no effect . . . if the representa- 

 tions made in the application for this policy, upon the faith of which 

 this contract is made, shall be found in any respect untrue." 



Colonel D wight was in the habit of making large business vent- 



