United States v. Elizabeth M. Siegel

The Government appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern Division of the Western District of Washington, in favor of Mrs. Siegel, suing under § 401 of the War Insurance Act as amended- by § 12 of the Act of December 24, 1919, to recover insurance on the life of her son, a soldier. He disappeared on October 24, 1918 and never was seen again.

The district court held that Siegel’s suit filed on June 4, 1952, over twenty-three years after his disappearance, was not barred by the limitation of the act under which the suit was filed, because the Army on Ocotber 23, 1918, listed him as a deserter, from which list his name was not removed until February 19,1949.

We agree with the Government that the listing as a deserter does not toll the limitation and that Mrs. Siegel could have begun her suit within the time limit. That time was extended, by § 1 of the act of May 29, 1928, 38 U.S.C.A. § 445 , as follows:

Nothing in the act sued on made the Army’s listing as a deserter a bar to recovery by those benefited by the insurance, the act providing the insurance on “any person in the active service”, in § 12, 41 Stats. 371, 374:

Obviously if the desertion…