• As in every other business, an insurance agent's primary enterprise is to sell insurance, a vocation no adult consumer would confuse with a religious order.^[12]
• Concomitantly, a reasonable buyer of insurance (or any other product) must, at peril of caveat emptor, act as a reasonable consumer, e.g., research her needs from multiple sources and price-shop for policies.^[13]
  • [12] "[F]or a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine." Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, at 138 (Penguin Books ed.1976).
  • [13] In Pennsylvania, this is no less true in insurance than any other business:
    • "Each insured has the right and obligation to question his insurer at the time the insurance contract is entered into as to the type of coverage desired and the ramifications arising therefrom." Kilmore, 595 A.2d at 626 (emphasis added).
    • Failure by the consumer to exercise due care in the selection and purchase can affect the scope of the duties owed to her by an insurance broker. Cf. Industrial Valley Bank and Trust Co. v. Dilks Agency, 751 F.2d 637, 640 (3d Cir.1985).
    • In that regard, we note without comment that (i) plaintiff and her husband told Scarazzo that they were interested in policies with some savings element, see Weisblatt Dep. at 90, and (ii) Scarazzo thereafter focused on policies that provided a savings element, and excluded mention of policies, such as term insurance, that did not.

1998  - LC - Weisblatt v. Minnesota Mut. Life Ins. - [link-justia]