RATAN LAL Vs. METROPOLITAN INSURANCE CO LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal arises out of a suit for the realisation of a claim under an insurance policy on the death of the life insured, namely, that of one Pyare Lal of Siwan. It is not denied that Pyare Lal died on 19-4-1946, and the plaintiffs, who are his sons and appellants in this Court, are his successors and heirs. Obviously, therefore, here there is no scope for any controversy as to the title of the plaintiffs nor in fact there is any. Further it is not denied that on 23-1-1946, Pyare Lal filled up an application form supplied by the agent of the respondent company to insure his life for a sum of Rs. 10,000/- on twenty years' endowment and having signed it handed over the same to that agent along with a cheque for a sum of Rs. 549/1/-, that being the first annual premium payable for the year 1946 and that thereafter on medical examination by the doctor of the company his life was found to be a first class life. Exhibit 2 (a), which is dated 31-1-1946, is the kutcha receipt of the aforesaid amount granted by the respondent Metropolitan Insurance Company Ltd., under the signature of one H.N. Chakravarty, Collector. It reads:

(2.) These conditions, it is not contested, were in the nature of warranties which in the case of insurance operate as absolute conditions, non-compliance with which voids the contract of insurance.

(3.) Accordingly, the submission made is that condition No. 2 here was a condition precedent to constitute any liability thereunder against the company. In other words, it is said that in the present case, apart from the common law liability which calls upon every candidate for insurance to make a full and faithful disclosure of all the facts material to the risk, there was in this case also a contractual liability on the part of the insured to inform the company about the illness, which, as claimed by the defendant company, had already set in, though after medical examination but in any case long before the acceptance of the policy. That liability, according to the defendant, not having been discharged by the insured, it was open to the company in law to avoid the contract and to refuse any payment thereunder. True that on the side of the plaintiffs it is not denied that the death of the assured had been proceeded by a short illness, but their version of the story is that illness had set in for the first time on the evening of 28-3-1946 and not at any time before that. Further their claim is that it is wrong to say that no intimation of this illness had ever sent to the company. Therefore, according to the plaintiffs, there was no default on the part of the insured either in the matter of disclosing all the facts material to the risk as contemplated under common law or in the matter of discharging what was undertaken under the contract.