Kelly v Solari: Difference between revisions

In February of the following year Mr. Solari’s widow, (also ignorant, we think, of the missed payment and Mr. Clift’s notation), applied at Argus’s office for the payment in the sum of £1000 under the policy. After deduction of {{strike|rent|costs}}, the widow was paid.  

Realising its mistake, Argus sued the [[little old lady]] to recover its money. In evidence, Argus’s Messrs. Bates and Clift stated that when they paid the money they had ''entirely forgotten'' that the policy had lapsed.

Thus the court faced a scenario in which, on the facts, they were obliged to deprive a recently-widowed little old lady her husband’s life insurance because of an oversight he made a month before he died.

Lord Arbinger, brilliantly, shifted the focus of the debate from the ''law'' — which appeared to offer no help at all — to the ''facts'', which, he pondered, might not have been properly investigated at trial. “I think the defendant ought to have had the opportunity of taking the opinion of the jury on the question whether in reality the directors had a knowledge of the facts, and therefore that there should be a new trial and not a verdict for the plaintiff.” But in doing so he took time to rehearse the law.