Great Benefit's revised health insurance policy

Great Benefit's revised health insurance policy is a later-issued contract that turns a dispute over one omitted phrase into a visible comparison between two policies. Produced at trial by Rudy Baylor, it explicitly excludes bone marrow transplants, while the Black family's earlier policy lists other major organ transplants but not bone marrow. The revised wording does not by itself establish when or why the exclusion was added; its force lies in the contrast it allows Baylor to put before the jury.

Identity and Origin

The policy was obtained by Max Leuberg, a law professor who was advising Baylor on the Black family's case. Leuberg had purchased it for one of his students the month before their meeting and planned to cancel it the following month. He gave it to Baylor to examine its language, especially the newly explicit treatment of transplant coverage.

Leuberg identified the significant change: the policy excluded all transplants, including bone marrow transplants. He urged Baylor to retain the document for trial and question Great Benefit's chief executive about why the wording had changed. His suggestion framed the document not simply as an example of current coverage, but as a point of comparison with the policy held by the Black family.

Wording and Contrast with the Black Policy

At trial, the revised policy was identified as a Great Benefit medical policy issued in September 1992, about five months before the testimony in which Baylor introduced it. The relevant exclusion appears in Section F, paragraph four, sub-paragraph c, clause thirteen. Its print is so small that the chief executive, M. Wilfred Keeley, has to bring the page close to his face to read it.

The clause excludes all transplants and specifically lists bone marrow. Baylor then places the Black family's policy beside it. That earlier policy excludes several major organ transplants, including kidney, liver, heart, lungs, and eyes, but does not list bone marrow. Keeley agrees that bone marrow is not specifically excluded from the Black policy. The distinction is narrow in wording but central to the dispute: Great Benefit's newer form makes explicit what the earlier form left unlisted.

The comparison also gives the jury a response to the defense's broad claim that transplant coverage was simply absent. In opening, Leo F. Drummond emphasizes that the policy costs eighteen dollars a week and does not cover bone marrow transplants, presenting the Black family's demand for the cost of treatment as excessive. Yet the Black policy's written exclusions do not name bone marrow, while the revised policy does. The two documents therefore make the wording itself a contested piece of evidence, rather than allowing the dispute to rest only on competing characterizations of what the contract covered.

Use in the Trial

Baylor uses the revised policy while questioning Keeley, after first asking him about Great Benefit's 1991 medical policies, claims, and denials. Keeley struggles to interpret the claims-data printout Baylor has supplied. Baylor then shifts to the policy, moving from figures Keeley cannot readily confirm to language he can be asked to read directly. The physical document becomes a way to make the difference between the two contracts legible to the jury.

Baylor asks when the policy was issued and then compares its transplant clause with the Black family's coverage. He also asks when Great Benefit changed its language to include the bone marrow exclusion. Keeley says he does not know and is not involved in writing the policies; he says the legal department writes them. When Baylor asks whether the change came after the Black family's lawsuit, Keeley does not confirm that it did. He says it might have happened before the suit. Asked whether it changed after the claim was filed in August 1991, he again says he does not know.

Those answers limit what the revised policy can prove about chronology. The document establishes that Great Benefit used explicit wording to exclude bone marrow transplants in a policy issued in September 1992. It does not, on Keeley's testimony, establish the exact date the wording was adopted or show that the lawsuit caused the revision. Baylor nevertheless argues that the difference supports the inference that bone marrow was not intended to be excluded from the Black family's policy: other transplants were listed there, bone marrow was not, and the newer form names it expressly.

Evidentiary Role and Significance

The policy's importance depends on its relationship to the earlier contract. Considered alone, it is a later insurance form with a broad transplant exclusion. Beside the Black family's policy, it becomes evidence of a change in drafting practice and a means to test Great Benefit's interpretation of its older language. Its small-print clause supplies a concrete counterpoint to the defense's repeated reliance on the proposition that the transplant was not covered.

The document also helps Baylor organize the case as a comparison the jurors can follow: what the older policy lists, what it leaves out, and what the later policy adds. That comparison complements the denial letters Dot Black reads to the jury, the testimony about Great Benefit's claims practices, and the evidence of Donny Ray Black's illness and death. It does not replace those elements or establish the company's intent by itself; it gives the larger argument a specific contractual contrast.

In his closing, Baylor returns to the broader evidentiary picture, including the documents and testimony presented at trial. The revised policy's lasting function is to make the wording dispute tangible: Great Benefit knew how to name bone marrow transplants as an exclusion in a later policy, while the Black family's policy did not name them. The gap between those texts becomes one of the clearest ways the trial examines whether the denial followed the contract or imposed a restriction that its language had not stated.