Saddler v. Cotton States Life & Health Insurance

Bell, Judge,

concurring specially. While I am reluctantly constrained to concur with the majority opinion because of its clarity coupled with the weight and present appropriateness of the authorities which it cites, it is my conviction that in cases such as this the better legal holding would be that the insurance companies, rather than the public, should be held responsible for the misrepresentations of insurance agents which may be made by them in their eagerness to sell insurance policies. In this varied and highly technical field, so vital to the public interests that it has been deemed advisable and necessary by the legislative authorities of this and many other States to regulate it and supervise it, it seems inappropriate to me for small print in an application for insurance, often not read by the applicant or even offered to him to be read as alleged in the petition before us, to take solemn legal precedence over the representations and inducements of insurance agents, who, after all, are selected solely by the companies for the purpose of selling insurance, and who, the companies in effect assert, are *872properly trained and qualified to advise the individual as one seeks to provide for family and to protect property through means of insurance.