Insurance Concealment and Representation

Title GR No. L-47593

33_Insular Life Assurance Co. vs. Feliciano Date: December 29, 1943
Ponente: OZAETA, J.
THE INSULAR LIFE ASSURANCE CO., LTD., SERAFIN D. FELICIANO ET AL., respondents
petitioner
Case Doctrine: When an applicant for insurance signs the application in blank and authorizes the soliciting
agent and/or medical examiner of the Company to write the answers for him, he made them his own agents
for that purpose, and he is responsible for their acts in that connection. If they falsified the answers for him,
he could not evade the responsibility for he falsification.
FACTS
1. Evaristo Feliciano was suffering with advanced pulmonary tuberculosis when he signed his
applications for insurance with the petitioner. On that same date Doctor Trepp, who had taken X-ray
pictures of his lungs, informed the respondent Dr. Serafin D. Feliciano, brother of Evaristo, that the
latter "was already in a very serious and practically hopeless condition." Nevertheless the question
contained in the application "Have you ever suffered from any ailment or disease of the lungs,
pleurisy, pneumonia or asthma?" appears to have been answered , "No"
2. The false answer above referred to, as well as the others, was written by the Company's soliciting
agent Romulo M. David, in collusion with the medical examiner Dr. Gregorio Valdez, for the purpose
of securing the Company's approval of the application.
3. The petitioner insists that upon the facts of the case the policies in question are null and void ab
initio and that all that the respondents are entitled to is the refund of the premiums paid thereon.
ISSUE/S
W/N petitioner is bound by the insurance contract. NO.
RESOLUTION
When Evaristo Feliciano, the applicant for insurance, signed the application in blank and authorized the
soliciting agent and/or medical examiner of the Company to write the answers for him, he made them his
own agents for that purpose, and he was responsible for their acts in that connection. If they falsified the
answers for him, he could not evade the responsibility for he falsification. He was not supposed to sign the
application in blank. He knew that the answers to the questions therein contained would be the basis of the
policy, and for that every reason he was required with his signature to vouch for truth thereof.
We cannot bring ourselves to believe that the insured did not take the trouble to read the answers
contained in the photostatic copy of the application attached to and made a part of the policy before he
accepted it and paid the premium thereon. He must have notice that the answers to the questions therein
asked concerning his clinical history were false, and yet he accepted the first policy and applied for another.
In any event, he obligated himself to read the policy when he subscribed to this statement: "My acceptance
of any policy issued on this application will constitute a ratification by me of any corrections in or additions
to this application made by the Company . . ." By accepting the policy he became charged with knowledge of
its contents, whether he actually read it or not. He could not ostrich-like hide his head from it in order to
avoid his part of the bargain and at the same time claim the benefit thereof. He knew, or was chargeable
with knowledge, from the very terms of the two policies sued upon (one of which is printed in English and
the other in Spanish) that the soliciting agent and the medical examiner had no power to bind the Company
by any verbal promise or oral representation. The insured, therefore, had no right to rely and we cannot
believe he relied in good faith upon the oral representation of said agent and medical examiner that he
(the applicant) was a fit subject for insurance notwithstanding that he had been and was still suffering with
advanced pulmonary tuberculosis.
RULING
Wheretofore, the motion for reconsideration is sustained and the judgment of the Court of Appeals is hereby
reversed. Let another judgment be entered in favor of the respondents and against the petitioner for the
refund of the premiums amounting to P1,389, with legal interest thereon from the date of the complaint, and
without any finding as to costs.
DISSENTING: HONTIVEROS, J.
An illiterate person or one who does not understand the English language (as is the case with Evaristo
Feliciano) is not guilty of inexcusable negligence in failing to read the application or having it read to him,
nor can it be said that such person deliberately made a false statement because he did not read over the
application.
2S 2016-17 (ALFARO)