Haddad v. New York Life Ins. Co‪.‬

The insurance company obtained a decree in the court below vacating a life and sickness indemnity policy upon which Haddad was making claim. The ground of the relief was that he had procured the policy by the false representation that for the preceding five years he had not consulted nor been examined or treated by any physician. It appeared beyond dispute at the trial that for some two or three years before the application date he had been suffering, habitually if not continually, severe abdominal pains with persistent fever; that for this period he had been under continual treatment by his family physician who could not ascertain the cause of the trouble; that for its better understanding he had been submitted for observation at two hospitals and to repeated X-ray and other examinations; but that no satisfactory diagnosis had been made. He was undoubtedly a sick man, although one physician was driven to think that his pains might be the result of Haddads own certainty that he was ill. Within a few months after he obtained the policy, he was taken with internal hemorrhages and submitted to a gall bladder operation, and at the time of the trial was not yet well.