The following extract is from the decision of the Court of Appeals in the famous Dwight case, which is so recently decided as to most forcibly illustrate this point:
"If an insurance policy in plain and unambiguous language makes the observance of an apparently immaterial requirement the condition of a valid contract, neither courts nor juries have the right to disregard it or to construct, by implication or otherwise, a new contract in the place of that deliberately made by the parties... Such contracts are open in construction,... but are subject to it only when, upon the face of the instrument, it appears that its meaning is doubtful or its language ambiguous or uncertain.
"An elementary writer says; 'Indeed, the very idea and purpose of construction imply a previous uncertainty as to the meaning of a contract, for when this is clear and unambiguous there is no room for construction and nothing for construction to do.'"
For this reason the Court of Appeals cited as the ground, and the only ground, for its decision against the widow, the following clause from the policy of the contesting company:
"This policy is issued, and the same is accepted by the said assured, upon the following express conditions and agreements: That the same shall cease and be null and void and of no effect... if the representations made in the application for this policy, upon the faith of which this contract is made, shall be found in any respect untrue."
Colonel Dwight was in the habit of making large business ventures. Several times, when he had done so, he had taken heavy amounts of life-insurance, so that in case of the failure of his undertakings, and his own death before he could regain his financial feet, his family would not suffer. On previous occasions he had dropped the greater part of his insurance as soon as his business ventures had terminated successfully. This is not an uncommon thing for rich or speculative men to do.
In 1878 Colonel Dwight died, with an insurance on his life of about $265,000, some of which he had carried for years; but a large part of it had been recently taken for the reasons above stated, and as he had done before under similar circumstances. Fifty thousand of this sum was in old and new policies against one company.