Q14 - Principle: If an insurance policy is written in such a

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen Application of Principle (i.e. figure out what missing info we need to trigger the principle)

Stimulus Breakdown:
PRINCIPLE: If a policy's written so that reasonable people wouldn't read it thoroughly, the policyholders reasonable expectations outweigh the policy itself.
APPLICATION: The policy itself should be outweighed, and we should pay for Celia's hail damage.

Answer Anticipation:
What info do we need to know to trigger the principle?
The policy was written such that reasonable people wouldn't read it thoroughly.
Celia had a reasonable expectation that this hail damage would be covered.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We don't need Celia to be reasonable, and we DO need to explicitly know that her expectation was reasonable.

(B) Boom! Looks great.

(C) We don't care if Celia read it, but what we're missing is whether she had a reasonable expectation that hail damage would be covered.

(D) We don't care if she read it; what's missing here is whether the policy was written in that certain way.

(E) We're missing both things we need, although this is close to implying that the policy was written in that certain way.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is great legal practice! We have the law; we just have to try to match it up to our client Celia's situation. Be lawyerly and nitpicky. It's not about whether the policyholder is a reasonable person, it's about whether the policy is written in "such a way". And it's not about whether the policyholder EXPECTS to be covered, it's about whether that's a reasonable expectation.

#officialexplanation

[rinagoldfield]

Here's the diagram and solution to question 14!

[ttunden]

Hi Rina

for the 1st condition, doesn't Celia have to BE the reasonable person? I chose the correct answer but when I went through the answer choices, they didn't meet my expectations. I was expecting something like Cecila is a reasonable person, reasonable person would not have read it thoroughly, and coverage for hail damage is a reasonable expectation.

[ttunden]

Think I get it now. I may have been to specific with the principle.

For the sufficient condition, the reasonable person apparently doesn't have to be celia, could just be any reasonable person. the necessary part is being met so it's good.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, I totally see where your confusion comes from, but it sounds like you sorted it out.

If we just stay very faithful to the language, (B) gives us the sufficient condition.

And Celia very well may be a reasonable person (we see she's capable of making reasonable expectations).

[magic.imango]

I'm not sure where the 2 sufficient conditions are coming from.

I diagrammed the principle as:

~Reasonable person does not read before signing ---> reasonable expectations of policyholder should take legal precedence.

I'm definitely thinking of this the wrong way because I was stumped when I hit the answer choices. Can anyone explain this?

[aescano209]

I'm not sure where the 2 sufficient conditions are coming from.

I diagrammed the principle as:

~Reasonable person does not read before signing ---> reasonable expectations of policyholder should take legal precedence.

I'm definitely thinking of this the wrong way because I was stumped when I hit the answer choices. Can anyone explain this?

Hey,

So just to comment quickly on your diagramming here of the sufficient condition. The ~that was placed before reasonable would indicate a negation of your sufficient condition which would lead to; Reasonable person would read before signing --> Reasonable expectation of policyholder should take legal precedence. You want to remove that ~ because it reads incorrectly with it (if you did add the ~it would need to read ~reasonable person would read before signing: the ~ negates the negative 'not' in the original sufficent condition). Anyways, the diagram should be (if something was written in a way that a REASONABLE person would not thoroughly read prior to signing --> the reasonable expectations of the policyholder takes precedence over the specific language.

The application here concludes that the insurance company should cover the hail damage even though the specific language was written in a way that excluded hail damage. Well, at this point we should ask ourselves...what's missing? Well the whole first part of the conditional statement is gone (the sufficient condition). We want an answer choice that would trigger the sufficient condition (Answer Choice B) which would help us lead to the application. A tip for future readers, a decent amount of the times in which there is a principle-application strengthen question, usually the application will have either some part of the sufficient condition missing (maybe there are multiple sufficient conditions and one is not triggered and we have to provide an answer choice that triggers/does not trigger the sufficient condition) and they conclude the necessary condition. Or in this case they will just give you a conclusion which is the necessary condition and we have to provide an answer choice that satisfies the sufficient condition to get to the application. I hope that wasn't too confusing and is somewhat helpful to someone.

[erikwoodward10]

Read all of the above explanations, and I'm not seeing the 2 SCs either. I got this right with only one SC. Diagrammed as:

Written in a way that a reasonable person doesn't read-->Reasonable expectation of policy holder takes precedence.

The application tell us that we have a situation where something should be covered, even though the policy doesn't explicitly cover it.

Given the evidence, the only way that this can be true is if the contract was "written in a way that a reasonable person doesn't read" AND that the reasonable expectation would be that hail damage is covered. That is B. I really don't care if she read it or if it was covered or not. I only care about how it was written and if she expected it to be covered.

Since I go this right, I'm not too worried about my logical setup... But I still don't understand the 2 SC approach used above. I seem to be using the principle as it is given, where as the 2 SC approach makes a whole new logical statement and fills in the gaps. That seems like extra work to me.

Thoughts?