Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The Connecticut judgment was that any excess in the mortuary fund above the average of the four preceding quarterly assessments in the Men's Division of the Safety Fund Department (taken for the purposes of these cases to be $300,000) , shall be distributed to certificate holders in diminution of assessments by crediting the excess on account of the next succeeding assessment. ”

“ Deaths were occurring between the time of the levy and the time when so much of it as might be paid would be paid in. The assessment was for the purpose of keeping up a fund of $300,000 to meet deaths promptly, as they occurred. Without giving the figures in detail it is enough to say that it clearly appears that the amount of the assessment, $322,378.48 was not in excess of what the subsequently rendered Connecticut judgment allowed. ”

“ It set up further that, in a suit brought by one Dresser on behalf of himself and all certificate holders, including the plaintiff, in the Connecticut Court having jurisdiction over the defendant and the mortuary fund from which alone, by the contract, death losses were payable, it was adjudicated on March 23, 1910, that if a certificate holder failed to pay a mortuary assessment the company could not pay the insurance in case of his death. ”