Double Indemnity

In Indiana last week, Marion County Superior Court Judge John Niblack ruled that the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. must pay accidental-death benefits on a policy held by a serviceman killed in Korea, even though the policy specified that its double-indemnity clause would not hold good if the insured died while "a member of the military services in time of war." "What you want," said the judge to the insurance company, "is for the court to rule there is a state of war between the U.S. and some foreign power. To ask this court to assume the functions of the Congress is asking too much."

Judge Niblack's decision had precedent which was still warm. Last fortnight the Pennsylvania supreme court reached the same conclusion on a double indemnity policy of the Pennsylvania Mutual Life Insurance Co. The Korean conflict, said the Pennsylvania court, is not a war, since "there was not, nor ever has been, any declaration of war by Congress, but merely a dispatch to Korea, by presidential order, of military, naval and air forces of the United States . . ."

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