Griffith v. Continental Casualty Co.

• Decision Date: 30 November 1921
• Citation: 235 S.W. 83,290 Mo. 455
• Parties: LOUISE M. GRIFFITH v. CONTINENTAL CASUALTY COMPANY, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

235 S.W. 83

290 Mo. 455

LOUISE M. GRIFFITH v. CONTINENTAL CASUALTY COMPANY, Appellant

Supreme Court of Missouri

November 30, 1921

Appeal from St. Louis City Circuit Court. -- Hon. Granville Hogan Judge.

Reversed and remanded.

Jones Hocker, Sullivan & Angert for appellant.

(1) Presumption against suicide vanishes when the evidence comes in. Brunswick v. Ins. Co., 278 Mo. 154, 213 S.W. 50. (2) In an action on an accident policy, defended on the ground of suicide, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove accidental death. Brunswick v. Ins. Co., 278 Mo. 154, 213 S.W. 50; Laessig v. Ins. Co., 169 Mo 280; Whitlatch v. Casualty Co., 149 N.Y. 45.

Kinealy & Kinealy for respondent.

(1) Where death by bodily injury suffered through external and violent means is fully established by direct evidence, the inference that it was either accidental or intentional inevitably arises. Brunswick v. Ins. Co., 278 Mo. 154, 213 S.W. 45. (2) Suicide is self-destruction through an intentional act done with the intent of causing death. Adkins v. Ins. Co., 70 Mo. 27. (3) Where the question is whether a death was accidental or suicidal, the burden of proof is upon the party claiming suicide. Reynolds v. Casualty Co., 274 Mo. 83; Brunswick v. Ins. Co., 278 Mo. 154, 213 S.W. 45; Andrus v. Bus. Men's Acc. Assn., 223 S.W. 70. (4) Where a defending insurance company claims a death is within one of the exceptions of the policy the burden of proof is upon it to so show. 1 C. J. 497, tit. Acc. Insurance; Fetter v. Fid. & Cas. Co., 174 Mo. 256; Meadows v. Life Ins. Co., 129 Mo. 76; Beile v. Protective Assn., 155 Mo.App. 629. (5) A party may not complain of an instruction which is in harmony with one given at his own request. Christian v. Ins. Co., 143 Mo. 460; Lange v. Railway, 218 Mo. 458; Gordon v. Park, 219 Mo. 600; Tranbarger v. Railroad, 250 Mo. 46.

RAGLAND, C. Small, C., concurs; Brown, C., dissents. Walker, D. E. Blair, Higbee and Graves, JJ., concur; James T. Blair, C. J., concurs in the result; Elder and Woodson, JJ., dissent.

OPINION

In Banc.

RAGLAND C.

-- This is a suit on a policy of insurance issued by defendant, whereby it, among other things, insured Harry C. Griffith against death suffered through personal bodily injury effected directly and independently of all other causes through external, violent and purely accidental means. It contained, however, this stipulation: "If the insured shall sustain loss of life by suicide or self-destruction, while either sane or insane, and such loss of life shall result within ninety days of the injury causing it, the company will pay one-tenth of said principal sum." The policy is dated July 8, 1910, and by reason of accumulations therein provided for, through annual renewals, the amount payable under it in 1919 in case of the insured's death through accidental means was $ 15,000. The plaintiff is the beneficiary named therein.

The petition after alleging the execution of the policy and its provisions as above indicated, except that it made no reference to the stipulation relating to suicide, stated "that thereafter on the 21st day of April, 1919, the said Harry C. Griffith received personal bodily injury effected directly and independently of all other causes through external, violent and purely accidental means, by accidentally falling out of a window of a room on the second floor of the St. Louis Baptist Hospital . . . to the ground beneath, whereby . . . he suffered concussion and hemorrhage of the brain; (and) that as a direct result of his said injuries the said Harry C. Griffith died on April 22, 1919."

The answer admitted the execution of the policy, in the terms and of the tenor alleged, and the death of Griffith, but denied the other allegations of the petition. It further averred that the death of Griffith was due to suicide and self-destruction; that the policy stipulated that in such event the defendant's liability should be $ 1,500 and no more; and that it brought into court and thereby tendered that sum.

Plaintiff filed a general denial by way of reply.

Plaintiff's evidence in chief tended to show the facts as follows: On April 16, 1919, the insured was taken to the City Hospital in the city of St. Louis, suffering from a gun-shot wound. Three days later his wife had him removed to the St. Louis Baptist Hospital. He was assigned Room 18 on the second floor of the building. This was a small room, eight feet wide by twelve feet long, with a window in the north end overlooking a brick pavement immediately below. The door was in the south end of the room, and the bed sat with the head against the west wall. Nurse Bridges was regularly in charge of this floor, but on Sunday night, April 20, about eleven o'clock, she went downstairs for night lunch, and during her absence her floor was taken charge of by Miss Sidney Bell, a nurse in charge of an upper floor. When Miss Bridges left, Griffith was in bed with the door of his room open, but whether the lower sash of the window was up or down is uncertain from the evidence, and Miss Bell was at a desk in the hall on the second floor. A bell on the upper floor, of which she was regularly in charge, called her upstairs shortly after Miss Bridges went to lunch. She answered this call, and when she came back to the second floor the door of Griffith's room was closed. She opened the door and found him dressed in a bathrobe sitting in a chair smoking in front of the window, the lower sash of which was raised. She stood in the doorway and asked him to go back to bed. He refused, saying that he wanted to smoke and could not do it in bed. She said that if he would go back to bed she would raise his head and he could then smoke, but he said no, that it choked him. She stepped inside the room and still insisted upon him going back to bed, and he continued to refuse, and asked her to go out and close the door, as it created a draft. When she stepped into the room Griffith got up out of his chair and turned facing her with his back to the window, and upon his still refusing to return to bed she, in her own words, started over to "set him in the bed and he sat out of the window." She ran to him and grabbed hold of his bathrobe as he went out, and he reached up his hands towards her. She then let go of the bathrobe and got him by the ankle and held him there for a time with his body dangling down. While in that position she saw two men across the street and called to them to knock on the basement windows of the hospital to call the other nurses. One of the men tried to climb up on a lower window and reach him, but Miss Bell's strength giving away she let go her hold on Griffith's ankle and he fell to the pavement below, suffering fractures of his jaw bone and a hemorrhage of the brain. He was immediately picked up and carried back to his room in the hospital, where he died from the injuries received from the fall, in the early hours of Tuesday, April 22.

Defendant's evidence tended to show that Griffith was suffering from tuberculosis and on that account despondent; that he had previously threatened self-destruction because of his physical condition; that the gunshot wound that was the occasion for sending him to the hospital was intentionally self-inflicted; that owing to the width of the window sill and the limited height to which the lower sash was raised, he could not, by sitting down in the window, or by attempting to do so, have fallen through the opening without a voluntary effort on his part directed to that end; and that having failed in his previous effort at self-destruction, he intentionally "sat out of the window" for the purpose of ending his life.

In rebuttal, plaintiff introduced evidence tending to controvert that of defendant.

Among others, the court gave at plaintiff's instance the following instruction:

"1. The court instructs the jury that if they believe from the evidence that on or about the 21st day of April, 1919, Harry C. Griffith fell out of a window in a room on the second floor of the St. Louis Baptist Hospital to the ground below and that he thereby sustained abrasions of his skin fractures of the bones of his head and hemorrhage of the brain, which caused his death on April 22, 1919, then your verdict must be in favor of the plaintiff for $ 15,000, with interest thereon at the rate of six per cent per annum from September 2, 1919, unless you believe from the evidence that said Harry C. Griffith intentionally threw himself out of the window with the intent and purpose of killing himself, and the court further instructs the jury that the burden is upon the defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that said Harry C. Griffith intentionally threw himself from the window...