Lamb v. Northwestern National Life Insurance

GILBERT, Chief Judge. The interesting question posed to us by this appeal is whether under the law of the District of Columbia a murder is a death by accidental means within the ambit of a double indemnity 1 clause of an insurance policy. Before we endeavor to discuss the matter we shall first set the factual scene from which the case arose: Edna and Charles Lamb returned to their home in Anne Arundel County from an evening at Palmer’s Restaurant in Landover, Maryland. The couple had been drinking and there apparently was an argument enroute to the home from the restaurant.

We infer that the argument continued while the couple prepared for bed. Then, according to Edna Lamb, as she, “started to lay down and ... [Charles] swung at . .. [her] .... [She] got up and set the clock. Turned off the lights, picked up two shells from somewhere. . . . ¹²⁷ [Charles] kept running his mouth .... [Edna] went back over and put the shells in the gun that was underneath the bed. Closed the gun up, cocked it and picked it up and pulled the trigger .... [Charles] got quiet and . . . [Edna] walked out of the room and went down and called the police.” Subsequently, Edna entered a plea of guilty to second degree murder. 2 Charles Lamb at the time of his death was a member of Teamster’s Local Union 639 of Washington, D.C., and an employee of Safeway Stores, Inc. Incidental to membership in the Union was a life, accidental death and dismemberment group insurance policy issued by Northwestern National Life Insurance Company (Northwestern).

The policy provided that: “The Company will pay the appropriate accidental death or dismemberment benefits, subject to the terms and conditions of the Policy, if an Insured suffers one of the ¹²⁸ losses specified because of an accidental injury ... with respect to Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance, ‘accidental injury’ means bodily injury effected solely through external, violent and accidental means." (Emphasis added.) The insurance contract also provided that, “This Policy is delivered in the state [sic] of the District of Columbia and is governed by its laws.” Maryland permits parties to a contract to agree as to the law which will govern their transaction unless there is no reasonable basis for the choice, or the choice of law violates a fundamental policy of the State. Kronovet v. Lipchin, 288 Md. 30, 43 , 415 A.2d 1096, 1104 (1980). Edna Lamb was the primary beneficiary under the policy, but she asserted no claim to the insurance proceeds. Had she done so, it would have been denied as a matter of law.

See generally 27 A.L.R.3d 794 ; see also Chase v. Jenifer, 219 Md. 564 , 150 A.2d 251 (1959). The contingent beneficiaries, the children of Charles and Edna Lamb, claimed the basic death benefit of $20,000 and further demanded the payment of an additional $20,000 under the double indemnity-accidental death feature of the insurance contract. Northwestern paid the death benefit but balked at paying double indemnity. Instead, it filed in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County a bill of complaint for a declaratory decree seeking construction of the policy.

The Circuit Court (Heise, J.) declared that the Lambs were not entitled to the accidental death benefit, and this appeal ensued. The case of Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Ins. Co., 291 U.S. 491 , 54 S.Ct. 461 , 78 L.Ed. 934 (1934), is the fountainhead from which flows all interpretations of what constitutes death by external, violent and accidental means. In Landress the Court, through Justice Stone, said that: “The insurance is not against an accidental result.

The stipulated payments are to be made only if the bodily ¹²⁹ injury, though unforeseen, is effected by means which are external and accidental .... This distinction between accidental external means and accidental result has been generally recognized and applied where the stipulated liability is for injury resulting from accidental means.” Justice Cardozo in his dissent in Landress predicted that the majority’s decision would cause ambiguity and uncertainty where none should exist. He wrote: “The attempted distinction between accidental results and accidental means will plunge this branch of the law into a Serbonian Bog. ‘Probably it is true to say that in the strictest sense and dealing with the region of physical nature there is no such thing as an accident.’ Halsbury, L.C. in Brintons v. Turvey, L.R. [1905] A.C. 230, 233. Cf.

Lewis v. Ocean Accident & Guaranty Corp., 224 N.Y. 18, 21 ; 120 N.E. 56 ; Innes v. Kynoch, [1919] A.C. 765, 775. On the other hand, the average man is convinced that there is, and so certainly is the man who takes out a policy of accident insurance. It is his reading of the policy that is to be accepted as our guide, with the help of the established rule that ambiguities and uncertainties are to be resolved against the company. Mutual Life Ins.

Co. v. Hurni Packing Co., 263 U.S. 167, 174 [ 44 S.Ct. 90, 90-91 , 68 L.Ed. 235 (1923)]; Stipcich v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 277 U.S. 311, 322 [ 48 S.Ct. 512, 515 , 72 L.Ed. 895 (1928)]. The proposed distinction will not survive the application of that test.” Just as Justice Cardozo prophesized, there has emerged throughout the country two heterogeneous views as to whether a murder victim sustains a death by accidental means, even though there is no dispute that the victim was deliberately slain. One view, styled as the “reasonable foreseeability” rule, is that, “although an insured is killed or injured by another person, the death or injury is deemed to have been caused by accident or through accidental means where it was neither foreseen, expected, . . . [nor] anticipa ¹³⁰ ted by the insured.” 49 A.L.R.3d 679 .

The majority of the courts do not perceive the slaying through the eyes of the murderer, which would undoubtedly reflect a wilful, deliberate, calculated act rather than an accident. Instead, they see the killing from the viewpoint of the victim to whom, absent misconduct from which he or she should have reasonably anticipated that he or she would be killed, the murder is unforeseen, unexpected and accidental within the terms of the insurance policy. Applications of that perception are found in Releford v. Reserve Life Ins. Co., 154 Tex. 228 , 276 S.W.2d 517 (1955) (a wife killed her husband in a domestic argument and the jury found as a fact that the husband’s “conduct was not such as to cause him reasonably to believe she would probably kill him ....”); Tabor v. Commercial Casualty Ins.

Co. of Newark, N.J., 104 W.Va. 162 , 139 S.E. 656 (1927) (where insured approached his killer with “offensive words” and a challenge to fight but did not commit an act of violence, he had no reason to think the other person intended to kill him); Great American Reserve Ins. Co. v. Sumner, 464 S.W.2d 212 , 49 A.L.R.3d 667 (Tex.Civ.App.1971) (insured killed by gunshot wound while engaging in coitus with assailant’s wife); Continental Casualty Co. v. Goodwin, 182 Okl. 311 , 77 P.2d 742 (1938) (“wife” killed the husband during a domestic dispute); American Life Ins. Co. v. Morris, 37 Ala.App. 438 , 72 So.2d 414 (1953), cert. denied, 260 Ala. 693 , 72 So.2d 418 (1954) (sixteen year old female slapped boyfriend in argument over another young woman, and the boyfriend then stabbed the sixteen year old causing her to bleed to death); Lewis v. Insurance Company of North America, 416 F.2d 1077 (5th Cir.1969) (question of whether an insured “could not have anticipated that he would be shot” by the woman with whom he lived and who he was assaulting was for the jury to decide); American Accident Co. v. Carson, 99 Ky. 441 , 36 S.W. 169 (1896) (an insured was shot and killed without provocation or any misconduct); Hutchcrafts’ Ex’r v. Travelers’ Insurance Co., 87 Ky. 300 , 8 S.W. 570 (1888) (insured waylaid, robbed and assassinated). ¹³¹ See also 10 Couch, Encyclopedia of Insurance Law (2d Ed.1982) § 41:36; Vance (3d Anderson Ed.) Handbook on the Law of Insurance, § 181. The State of Indiana has adopted a similar view with a slight modification.

In Freeman v. Commonwealth Life Ins. Co., 149 Ind.App. 211 , 271 N.E.2d 177 , (1971) remittitur denied, 259 Ind. 237 , 286 N.E.2d 396 (1972), the Court rejected the “reasonable foreseeability”