The Superior Court of Pennsylvania turned down an appeal from a couple who claimed their life insurance salesman misled them about how much their premium would increase as they got older.
Judge Deborah Kunselman wrote for a panel that included Judge Megan McCarthy King and Senior Judge James Colins. They ruled that Robert and Arlene Garwood had waived all five of the issues they raised in their appeal from a decision by the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County that favored Ameriprise Financial and RiverSource Life Insurance Co.
Resources
- A copy of the ruling is available here.
- An article about a ruling in another flexible-premium life case is available here.
“Briefly, the Garwoods bought life insurance from the defendants, and, as the Garwoods aged, their monthly payments began to increase,” Kunselman said. “They eventually surrendered the policy because of cost and sued under various statutory and common-law theories. The Garwoods lost on all jury issues at trial.”
Also, the trial judge ruled against them on an Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law claim, Kunselman said.
The first question on appeal was whether the trial court committed reversible error in finding the Garwoods failed to introduce sufficient evidence to support a finding that the defendants made misrepresentations in the sale of the Garwoods’ “lexible-premium adjustable whole life insurance policy.
“Regarding their first appellate issue, the Garwoods might argue that they preserved the question, because the word ‘sufficient’ appears in both their motion for post-trial relief and their statement of the first appellate issue,” Kunselman said. “If so, they would be wrong.”
The panel dispatched the other issues similarly.