Knickerbocker Life Insurance v. Peters

Miller, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The insurance company defends this action under the clause in the policy which makes it void, if the assured “shall die by his own hand or act.” It is now too well settled to admit of question, that this clause is not to he construed as comprehending every possible case in which life is taken by the party’s own act. For instance, all the authorities concur in the view that an unintentional or accidental taking of life is not within the meaning and intention of the clause. Thus if by inadvertence or accident a party shoots himself' with a gun or pistol, or takes poison by mistake, or in a sudden frenzy or delusion tears a bandage from a wound and bleeds to death, in the literal sense of the terms he dies by his own act, yet all the decisions agree that a reasonable construction of the proviso according to the plain and obvious intention of the parties would exclude such cases from its operation.

There is much conflict of judicial opinion as to what in other respects, is its true construction. The English Courts have determined that the clause includes all intentional acts of self-destruction, whether criminal or not, and that insanity, in order to prevent the clause from operating, must have progressed so far or be of such a character, as to render the party unable to appreciate and understand the nature and physical consequences of the act he was committing, and that the question whether he was, at the time, in a state of mind to be morally and legally responsible for his acts is immaterial. Borradaile vs. Hunter, 5 M. & G., 639; Clift vs. Schwabe, 3 M. G. & S., 437. The rejection of this latter consideration met however with the strong dissent of some of the ablest of the English ⁴¹⁸ Judges.

Ch. J. Tendal, C. B. Pollock and Ckeswell and Wightmajt, J. J., held that looking at the words themselves and the context and position in which they are found, a felonious killing of himself and no other was intended to be excepted from the policy. That was the construction placed by C. J. Tendal, upon the proviso in Borradaile vs. Hunter, and the clause before us is equally open to the same application of the maxim noscitur a sociis, and to the same answer that was given to it by a majority of the Court in that case. There is also a diversity of opinion upon the same subject in this country.

In Dean vs. American Mutual Life Ins. Co., 4 Allen, 96 , the Court, in a very elaborate opinion by C. J. Bigelow, which is generally considered as adopting and following Borradaile vs. Hunter, use this language : “ If the death was caused by accident, by superior and overwhelming force, in the madness of delirium, or under any circumstances from which it may be fairly inferred, that the act of self-destruction was not the result of the will or intention of the party adapting the means to the end, and contemplating the physical nature and effects of the act, then it may be justly held to be a loss not excepted within the meaning of the proviso. A party cannot be said to die by his own hand, in the sense in which those words are used in the policy, whose self-destruction does not proceed from the exercise of an act of volition, but is the result of a blind impulse of mistake or accident, or of other circumstances over which the will can exercise no control.” And in the more recent case of Cooper vs. Massachusetts Ins Co., 102 Mass., 227 , the same Court declares that this limitation is in substance the same as that which the English cases have adopted. In Eastabrook vs. Union Mutual Life Ins.

Co., 54 Maine, 224, the Judge at the trial instructed the jury, that if the insured was governed by irresistible or blind impulse in committing the act of suicide, the plaintiff could recover, and the jury found ⁴¹⁹ specially that the self-destruction was the result of a blind and irresistible impulse, over which the will had no control, and was not an act of volition. The Court, in a well reasoned opinion by Oh. J. Appleton, after concurring in the construction of the clause, and the views expressed by C. J. Tendal in Borradaile vs. Hunter, add: “ But whether these views are correct or not, the defendants had the benefit of instructions in entire conformity with the law as stated by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in Dean vs. American Mutual Ins. Co., and the jury have found the facts such as in accordance with the law of that case would justify their verdict ’ ’ The Court of Appeals of New York in Van Zandt vs. Mutual Life Ins.

Co., 55 N. Y. Rep., 169 , admit the clause would not apply if the party committed the act under the influence of some insane impulse which he could not resist, but insist that no case has gone so far as to adjudicate, that the mere want of capacity to