New York Life Insurance v. Dodge

Mr. Justice McReynolds

delivered the opinion of the court.

Defendant in error brought suit January 27, 1915, in Circuit Court, Phelps County, Missouri, upon a policy dated October 20, 1900, on life of her husband, Josiah.B. Dodge, who died February 12, 1912. She alleged: That plaintiff in error, a New York corporation, had long maintained local offices and carried on the business of life insurance in Missouri, where she and her husband resided; that in 1900, at St. Louis, he applied for and received the policy, she being named as beneficiary; that premiums were paid to October 20, 1907, when the policy lapsed, having then a-net value, three-fourths of which, less “indebtedness to the company given on account of past premium payments” applied as required by the Missouri nonforfeiture- statute (§ 7897) sufficed to extend it beyond assured’s death. Further, that upon application, by assured and herself presented at St. Louis the company there made him loans amounting, October 20, 1907, to $1,350, but of this only $599.65 had been applied to premiums. She asked judgment for full amount of policy less loan, unpaid premiums, interest, etc.

Answering, the company admitted issuance of policy, but denied liability because assured borrowed of it, November 1906, at its Home Office, New York City, $1350, hypothecating the policy there as security and then failed to pay premium due October 20, 1907, whereupon in strict, compliance with New York law and agreements made there the entire reserve .was appropriated to sat*366isfy the loan, and all obligation ceased. The assured being duly notified offered no objection. It further set up that as the loan, pledge and foreclosure were within New York the Federal Constitution protected them against inhibition or modification by a Missouri statute; and if intended to produce such result § 7897, Rev. Stats. Mo., 1899, lacked validity.

In reply, defendant in error denied assent to alleged settlement; maintained all transactions in question took place in Missouri; and asserted validity of its applicable statutes.'

The Springfield Court of Appeals affirmed a judgment for $2,233.45 — amount due after deducting loan, unpaid premiums, etc. 189 S. W. Rep. 609. It declared former opinions of the state Supreme Court conclusively settled the constitutionality of § 7897 and that the reserve, after paying advances for premiums, was thereby appropriated to purchasing term insurance, notwithstanding any contrary agreement. Burridge v. Insurance Co., 211 Missouri, 158; Smith v. Mutual Benefit Life Ins. Co., 173 Missouri, 329. Effort to secure a review by the Supreme Court failed.

Section 7897, Rev. Stats, of Mo., 1899, in effect until amended in 1903, provides: “No policies of insurance on life hereafter issued by any life insurance company authorized to do business in this state, . . . shall, after payment upon it of three annual payments, be forfeited or become void, by reason of non-payment of premiums thereof, but it shall be subject to the following rules of commutation, to wit: The net value of the policy, when the premium becomes due, and is not paid, shall be computed . . . and after deducting from three-fourths of such net value, any notes or other evidence of indebtedness to the company, given on account of past premium payments on said policies, issued to the insured, which indebtedness shall be then canceled, the balance *367shall be taken as a net single premium for temporary insurance for the full amount written in the policy; . This section and number 7899 are in the margin.1

*368Both defendant in error and her husband, the assured, at all times, here material resided in Missouri. Being duly licensed by that State, plaintiff in error, responding to an application signed by Josiah B. Dodge at St. Louis, issued and delivered to him there a five thousand dollar twenty year endowment policy upon his life, dated October 20, 1900, naming his wife beneficiary but reserving the right to designate another. Among other things, it stipulated: “Cash loans can be obtained by the insured on the sole security of this policy on demand at any time after this policy has been in force two full years, if premiums have been duly paid to the anniversary of the insurance next succeeding the date when the loan is made. Application for any loan must be made in writing to the Home Office of the company, and the loan will be subject to the. terms of the company’s loan agreement. The. amount of loan available at any time is stated below, and includes any previous loan then unpaid. Interest will be at the rate of five per cent, per annum in advance.” Continuation after failure to pay premium was guaranteed, also reinstatement within five years. It further provided : “Premiums are due and payable at the Home Office, *369unless otherwise agreed in writing, but may be paid to an agent producing receipts signed by one of the above-named officers and countersigned by the agent. If any premium is not paid on or before the day when due, or within one month of grace, the liability of the company shall be only as. hereinbefore provided for such case.” “Any indebtedness to the company, including any balance of the premium for the insurance year remaining unpaid will be deducted in any settlement of this policy or of any benefit thereunder.”

By an application addressed to the company at New York accompanied by a loan agreement, both signed at St. Louis and “forwarded from Missouri Clearing House branch office, August 29, 1903,” together with pleclge of the policy — alireceived and accepted at the Home Office in New York City — the assured obtained from the company a loan of $490. Its check for the proceeds drawn on a New York bank and payable to his order was sent to him at St. Louis by mail. Annually thereafter the outstanding loan was settled and a larger one negotiated — all in substantial accord with plan just described. The avails were applied partly to premiums; the balance went directly to assured by the company’s check on a New York bank. Copies of last application, loan agreement and instruction which follow indicate the details of the transaction.

[Application]

Nov. 9,1906.

New York Life Insurance Company, 346 & 348 Broadway, New York.

Be Policy No. 2,054,961.

Application is hereby made for a cash loan of $1,350.00 on the security of the above policy, issued by the New York Life Insurance Company on the life of. Josiah B. Dodge, subject to the terms of said Company’s Loan Agreement.

*370Said policy is forwarded herewith for deposit with said Company as collateral security, together with said Company’s Loan Agreement duly signed in duplicate.

Josiah B. Dodge. Leo F. Dodge.

Forwarded from Missouri Clearing House, Branch Office, Nov. 9, 1906. M. F. Bayard, Cashier.

[Policy Loan Agreement.]

Pursuant to the provisions of Policy No. 2054961 issued by the New York Life Insurance Company on the life of Josiah B. Dodge, the undersigned has this day . obtained ia cash loan from said Company of the sum of thirteen hundred fifty dollars ($1,350 00), the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, conditioned upon pledging as collateral said, policy with said Company as sole security for said loan and giving assent to the terms of this Policy Loan Agreement; therefore,

In consideration of the premises, the undersigned hereby agree as follows:

1. To pay said Company interest on said loan at the rate of five per cent per annum, payable in advance from this date to the next anniversary of said policy, and annually in advance on said anniversary and thereafter.

2. To pledge, and do hereby pledge, said policy , as sole security for the payment of said loan and interest ahd herewith deposit said policy with said Company at its Home Office.

3. To pay said Company said sum when due with interest, reserving, however, the right to reclaim said policy by repayment of said loan with interest at any time before due, said repayment to cancel this agreement without further- action.

4. That said loan shall become due and payable—

(a) Either if any premium on said policy or any im *371terest on said loan is not paid on the date when due, in which event said pledge shall, without , demand or notice, of any kind, every demand and notice being hereby waived, be foreclosed by satisfying said loan in the manner provided in said policy;

(b) Or, (.1) on the maturity of the policy as a death claim or an endowment; (2) on the surrender of the policy for a cash value; (3) on the selection of a discontinuing option at the end of any dividend period. In any such event the amount due on said loan shall be deducted from the sum to be paid or allowed under said policy.

o. That the application for said loan was made to said Company at its Home Office in the City of New York, was áccepted, the money paid by it, and this agreement made and delivered there; that said principal and interest are payable at said Home Office, and that this contract is made under and pursuant to the laws of the State of New York, the place of said contract being said Home, Office of said Company.

In witness whereof, the said parties hereto have hereunto set their hands and affixed their seals this eighth day of November, 1906.

Josiah B. Dodge (L. S.) Leo F. Dodge. (L. S.)

Signed and sealed in presence of Geo. T. Lewis.

Forwarded from Missouri Clearing House, Branch Office, Nov. 9, 1906. M. F. Bayard. Cashier.

[Instruction.]

Nov. 9,1906.

New York Life Insurance Company, 346 & 348 Broadway, New York.

Re Policy No. 2,054,961.

Please deduct from the cash loan of $1,350.00 applied 'for on Nov., Í906, on the security of the above policy, *372an amount sufficient to pay present loan and prem. and int. to Oct., ’07.

Josiah B. Dodge. Leo F. Dodge.

Witness: Geo. T. Lewis.

Forwarded from Missouri Clearing House, Branch Office, Nov. 9,1906. M. F. Bayard, Cashier.

The premium due October 20, 1907, not being paid, the company applied entire reserve in discharge of insured’s indebtedness as provided by laws of New York and sent him by mail the following letter.

New York, December 17th, 1907.

Mr. Josiah B. Dodge, 4962 Maryland Ave., St. Louis, Mo.

Be Policy No. 2054961.

Dear Sir: By a loan agreement executed on the 8th day of November, 1906, the above policy on the life of Josiah B. Dodge was pledged to and deposited with the New York Life Insurance Company as collateral security for a cash loan of $1350.00.

The premiuiá and interest due on said policy on the 20th day of October, 1907, not having been paid, the principal of said loan became due and has been settled according to the terms of the policy, and the policy has no further value.

Yours truly, John C. McCall, Secretary, By E. M. C.

This was received by assured December 19, 1907, and neither he nor the beneficiary, during his life, offered objection to the action taken.

That the policy when issued to Dodge became a Missouri contract, subject to its statutes, so far as valid and applicable, is undisputed and clear. The controlling doctrine in that regard was announced and applied in Equitable Life Assurance Society v. Clements, 140 U. S. 226; New York Life Insurance Co. v. Cravens, 178 U. S. 389, and Northwestern Life Insurance Co. v. Riggs, 203 U. S. *373243. In each of those cases the controversy related to the interpretation and effect of an original policy— not a later, good faith agreement between the parties. We held that to the extent there stated the State had power to control insurance contracts made within its borders. With those conclusions we are now-entirely content; but they do not rule the question presently presented. Here the controversy concerns effect of the state statute upon agreements between the parties made long after date of the policy and action taken thereunder; their essential fairness and accordance with New York laws are not challenged.

Considering the circumstances recited above, we think competent parties consummated the loan contract now relied upon in New York where it was to be performed. And, moreover, that it is one of a kind which ordinarily no State by direct action may prohibit a citizen within her borders from making outside of them. It should be noted that the clause in the policy providing "cash loans can be obtained by the insured on the sole security of this policy on demand, etc.,” certainly imposed no obligation upon the company to make such a loan if the Missouri statute applied and inhibited valid hypothecation of the reserve as security therefor as defendant in error maintains. She cannot, therefore, claim anything upon the theory that the loan contract actually consummated, was one which the company , had legally obligated itself to make upon demand.

In Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 578, we held a Louisiana statute invalid which undertook to restrict the right of a citizen while within that State to place insurance upon property located there by contract made and to be performed beyond its borders. We-said “the mere fact that a citizen may be within the limits of a particular State does not prevent his making a contract outside its .limits while he himself remains within it,” and ruled *374that under the Fourteenth Amendment the right to contract outside for insurance on property within a State is one which cannot be taken away by state legislation. So to contract is a parf; of the liberty guaranteed to every citizen. The doctrine of this case has been often reaffirmed and must be accepted as established. Nutting v. Massachusetts, 183 U. S. 553, 557; Delamater v. South Dakota, 205 U. S. 93, 102; Provident Savings Assn. v. Kentucky, 239 U. S. 103, 114; Adams v. Tanner, 244 U. S. 590, 595.

The court below rested its judgment denying full effect to the loan agreement upon Smith v. Mutual Benefit Life Ins. Co., supra, and Burridge v. Insurance Co., supra. In them the Supreme Court distinctly held § 7897 controlling and the insurer liable upon policies actually issued in Missouri notwithstanding any subsequent stipulation directing different disposition of reserve after default. In the latter it expressly approved the doctrine of the first and, among other things, (p. 171) said:

“Attending to that section [No. 7897] as it read when the policy issued and when the insured died, it will be observed that the net value of the policy is to be computed. Then from three-fourths of such net value there is to be taken away — what? All indebtedness? Not at all. There shall be taken away 'any notes or other evidence of indebtedness to the company, given on account of past premium payments on said policies’ The residue, if any, then goes automatically to the purchase of temporary or extended insurance . . . In that [the Smith] case, therefore, the scope and meaning of that clause of our non-forfeiting insurance statute was held in judgment in the stiffest sense and this court decided that the statute was mandatory; that the character of the indebtedness to be deducted from the net value before applying the residue to the purchase of temporary or extended in*375surance must be looked to and was limited by the clear words of the statute ‘to notes or other evidences of indebtedness to the company, given on account of past premium payments’ on the policy issued to the insured; and did not include notes and evidences of indebtedness arising in other ways. It is not apparent, assuming the statute be constitutional, how, giving heed to the hornbook maxim, expressio unius, etc., any other conclusion could have been arrived at in reason. It was held furthermore, in effect, that such provisions of law evidenced a sound and just governmental policy, and wrote into every policy of life insurance, coming within its purview, a mandate not to be abrogated in whole, or hedged about or lopped off in detail, by policy provisions, nor to be contracted away otherwise than as prescribed by statute.”

Treating the loan to Dodge as made undena New York agreement which Missouri lacked power directly to control, the question presented becomes similar in principle to the one decided in New York Life Insurance Co. v. Head, 234 U. S. 149. There suit was instituted in Missouri upon a policy personally applied for and received while in that State by a citizen of New Mexico. Nine years afterwards, having duly acquired the policy in New Mexico, the transferee wrote from there to the insurer in New York and effected a loan under an agreement like the one now before us. The state courts held the policy a Missouri contract and the loan agreement controlled by its nonforfeiture statute.

Assuming the policy to be a Missouri contract, we declared that State without power to extend its authority over citizens of New Mexico and into New York and forbid the later agreement there made simply because it modified the first one. We said: “It would be'impossible to permit the statutes of Missouri to operate beyond the jurisdiction of that State and in the State of New York *376and there destroy freedom of contract without throwing down the constitutional barriers by which all the States are restricted within the orbits of their lawful authority and upon the preservation of which the Government under the Constitution depends.” The reasoning advanced by the Missouri Supreme Court to support its ruling was thus summarized:' “As foreign insurance companies have no right to come into the State and there do business except as the result of a license from the State and as the State exacts as a condition of a license that all foreign insurance companies shall be subject to the laws of the State as if they were domestic corporations, it follows that the limitations of the state law resting upon domestic corporations also rest upon foreign companies and therefore deprive them of any power which a domestic company could not enjoy, thus rendering void or inoperative any provision of their charter or condition in policies issued by them or contracts made by them inconsistent with the Missouri law.” And this argument we declared unsound since the “proposition cannot. be maintained without holding that ‘because a State has power to license a foreign insurance company to do business within its borders and the authority to regulate such business, therefore a State has power to regulate the business of such company outside its borders and which would otherwise be beyond the State’s authority — a distinction which brings the contention right back to the primordial conception upon which alone it would be possible to sanction the doc-, trine contended for, that is, that because a State has power to regulate its domestic concerns, therefore it has the right to control the domestic concerns of other States.”

Under the laws of New York, where the parties made the loan agreement now before us, it was valid; also it was one which the Missouri legislature could not destroy or prevent a citizen within its borders from making *377beyond them by direct inhibition; and applying the principles accepted and enforced in New York Life Insurance Co. v. Head, we think the necessary conclusion is that such a contract could not be indirectly brought into subjection to statutes of the State and rendered ineffective through a license authorizing the insurance company there to do business. As construed and applied by the Springfield Court of Appeals, § 7897 transcends the power of the State. To hold otherwise would permit destruction of the right — often of great value — freely to borrow money upon a policy from the issuing company at its home office and would, moreover, sanction the impairment of that liberty of contract guaranteed to all by the. Fourteenth Amendment.

Reversed.

“Sec. 7897. Policies non-forfeitable, when. — No policies of insurance on life hereafter issued by any life insurance company authorized to do business in this state, on and after the first day of August, A. D. 1879, shall, after payment upon it of three annual payments, be forfeited or become void, by reason of non-payment of premiums thereof, but it shall be subject to the following rules of commutation, to wit: The net value of the policy, when the premium becomes due, and is not paid, shall be computed upon the actuaries’ or combined experience table of mortality, with four per cent, interest per annum, and after deducting from three-fourths of such net value, any notes or other evidence of indebtedness to the company, given on account of past premium payments on said policies, issued to the insured, which indebtedness shall be then canceled, the balance shall be taken as a net single premium for temporary insurance for the full amount written in the policy; and the term for which said temporary insurance shall be in force shall be determined by the age of the person whose life is insured at the time of default of premium, and the assumption of mortality and interest aforesaid; but, if the policy shall be an endowment, payable at a certain time, or at death, if it should occur previously, then, if what remains as aforesaid shall exceed the net single premium of temporary insurance for the remainder of the endowment term for the full amount of the policy, such excess shall be considered as a net single premium for a pure endowment of so much as said premium will purchase, determined by the .age of the insured' at date of default in the payment of premiums on the original policy, and the table of mortality and interest' aforesaid, which amount shall be paid at end of original term of endowment, if the insured shall then be alive.” (R. S. 1889, § 5856, amended — r.) [By Act of Missouri Legislature approved March 27, 1903, this section was amended by substituting for the words '“any notes o^ other evidence of indebtedness to the company, given on account of past premium payments on said policies, issued to the insured, which indebtedness shall be then canceled” the following ones: “any notes given on account of past premium payments on said policy issued to the insured, and any other evidence of indebtedness to the company, which notes and indebtedness shall be then canceled.”]

“Sec. 7899. Rule of payment on commuted policy. — If the death of the insured occur within the term of temporary insurance covered' *368by the value of the policy as determined in § 7897, and if no condition of the insurance other than the payment of premiums shall have been violated by the insured, the company shall be bound to pay the amount of the policy, the same as if there had been no default in the payment of premium, anything in the policy to the contrary notwithstanding: Provided, however, that notice of the claim and proof of the death shall be submitted to the company in the same manner as provided by the terms of the policy within ninety days after.the decease of the insured; and -provided also, that the company shall have the right to deduct from the amount insured in the policy the amount compounded at six per cent, interest per annum of all the premiums that had been foreborne at the time of the decease, including the whole of the year’s premium in which the death occurs, but such premiums shall in no case exceed the ordinary life premium for the age at issue, with intefest as last aforesaid.” (R. S. 1889, § 5858 — t.)