The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with a trial court Friday that a $5 million verdict in favor of customers claiming they paid inflated life insurance premiums should be reduced to less than $1 million due to statute of limitation issues.

In 2023, a federal jury in Missouri awarded a $5 million verdict in favor of the plaintiff, Christopher Y. Meek, for nearly 40 years of inflated prices for Kansas City Life Insurance Co. In part, U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips for the Western District of Missouri reduced the payout to $908,000 under Kanas’s five-year statute of limitations. Both sides disagreed on the amount. Meek pushed for an $18 million damages award as estimated by one of his experts, while the insurance company argued that the evidence was insufficient to support any amount.