Platke v. John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance

The underlying purpose of the legislature in enacting sec. 209.07, Stats., can be learned from declarations of the Iowa supreme court. This is true because our statute, adopted in 1911, was derived from the Iowa statute, enacted in 1897. In Weimer v. Economic Asso. (1899), 108 Iowa 451, 453, 79 N. W. 123, that court set out the purposes of the statute:

“The very evident purpose of the statute is to prevent the defeat of recovery on any policy where the company has, by its skilled agent, examined and passed upon the fitness of the applicant for insurance. The estoppel is directed to inquiry as…