Kansas Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company, Inc. v. Farmway Credit Union

Kansas Farm Bureau Life Insurance (KFB) (plaintiff) insured Keith Schreuder's life; after he disappeared for seven years, Farmway Credit Union (defendant) obtained a court decree presuming him dead and submitted a claim, which KFB paid in full settlement, relying on that court-ordered presumption. KFB later learned Schreuder was actually alive and demanded Farmway return the payment; Farmway refused, and KFB sued for both a contract implied by mutual mistake and unjust enrichment. The trial court granted KFB summary judgment on the mutual-mistake theory and called the unjust-enrichment claim moot; the court of appeals affirmed and treated the two theories as functionally the same. On further appeal, Farmway argued this was really a binding compromise-and-settlement, not a mistake, and separately that KFB had knowingly assumed the risk that the presumption of death might be wrong when it chose to pay based on that presumption alone.