Cobb v. Aetna Life Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 12 January 1979
• Docket Number: No. 48003.,48003.
• Citation: Cobb v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 274 N.W.2d 911 (Minn. 1979)
• Parties: Louise B. COBB, et al., Respondents, v. AETNA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

274 N.W.2d 911 (1979)

Louise B. COBB, et al., Respondents, v.AETNA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant.

No. 48003.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

January 12, 1979.

Faegre & Benson and Wright W. Brooks and Ludwig B. Gartner, Jr., Minneapolis, for appellant.

Briggs & Morgan and John R. Kenefick, St. Paul, for respondents.

Heard before PETERSON, TODD, and SCOTT, JJ., and considered and decided by the court en banc.

SCOTT, Justice.

This is an appeal by defendant, Aetna Life Insurance Company(Aetna), from three separate judgments of $97,576.84 each in favor of plaintiffsLouise B. Cobb,¹Josephine B. Carpenter, and George B. Benz.

George W. Benz(hereafter the insured) died on June 22, 1974, at the age of 68.At the time of death he was an insured under a group policy issued by Aetna² providing accidental death benefit coverage.Under the terms of the policy, Aetna agreed to pay the sum of $250,000 upon proof of accidental death.The insured's three children were the beneficiaries of this insurance policy.Subsequent to their father's death they filed a claim with Aetna for the face amount of the policy.Aetna denied the application for benefits, claiming that the death was not accidental, and the beneficiaries commenced this action in Ramsey County District Court.

The action was tried to a jury, which found by special interrogatory that the insured had suffered a bodily injury caused by accident which directly caused his death, to the exclusion of all other causes.The trial court immediately ordered separate judgments in favor of each plaintiff for one-third of the face amount of the policy, plus interest.The court denied defendant's motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial.We affirm.

George W. Benz' death was unexpected.His only persistent health problems in the years prior to his death were a disorder of the nerves in the skin of his feet (peripheral neuritis),³ and a slight depression.⁴Otherwise, in the year prior to his death, he did not bring any health problems to the attention of his physician.⁵

In the weeks prior to his death, the insured was, by all outward appearance, in good health and maintained his normal business schedule.On the evening prior to his death the insured and his wife, Louise Benz, met with friends to plan an upcoming fishing trip to Iceland and have dinner.He appeared to be in his normal state of health and was quite enthusiastic about the trip.The insured and his wife were home and in bed by 11:00 p. m. He was not ill during the night.

The insured awoke between 7:30 and 8:00 on Saturday morning, June 22, 1974.After a breakfast of juice, toast, fruit and coffee, he busied himself around the house and yard.Late in the morning, Louise Benz left to visit their son; she spoke with her husband before she left.She returned home in approximately one hour.After calling to her husband and receiving no response, she began looking for him.She found him seated erect on a small settee in the basement.His eyes were open, he had his glasses on, and he had books and papers in his lap.He did not respond to his wife, and she could not rouse him.At trial she testified:

"* * * I couldn\'t rouse him, so I thought I would try to make him a little more comfortable.So I went to put his head down on this little settee on which he was sitting, and I noticed some yellow-brownish brownish sera stuff run out of his mouth, and kind of a liquidy thing, and just put his head down and went immediately to call the Fire Department * * *."

Chief Gordon Vadnais of the White Bear Lake Fire Department and Rescue Squad was one of the first persons to arrive on the scene.Chief Vadnais had been with the fire department for 28 years and was an instructor in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (C.P.R.).He found the insured sitting on a small couch.He could not elicit any response from the insured nor could he detect whether he was breathing.When questioned as to whether he noticed any material coming out of the insured's mouth, he testified:

"I don\'t know if I noticed at that time or at the time we got him on the floor, but there was kind of a yellow material, a yellow cheese-colored type material in his mouth area."

and later:

"I swept his mouth area, tipped his head to the side, but I didn\'t get anything, just this yellow type fluid there."

Chief Vadnais moved the insured onto the floor and commenced the C.P.R. procedure.He first attempted to ventilate the insured by blowing air into his lungs.The air exchange was poor, and Chief Vadnais could not see the insured's lungs rise.In response to the poor ventilation, he connected the insured to an "aspirator-resuscitator inhalater," a machine designed to clear out the mouth and throat area with suction and then blow air into the lungs.Even after aspiration, however, air did not appear to go into the insured's lungs.He was then transported to Midway Hospital.

The ambulance was met at Midway Hospital by Dr. John Fee, a long-time personal friend and business associate of the insured.He immediately observed that the insured was deeply cyanotic.There was no heartbeat.Dr. Fee discovered that the insured's mouth and trachea were packed with food material, and suspected that the area below the trachea was packed solid as well.Because of his inability to establish an airway, Dr. Fee discontinued attempts at resuscitation and pronounced the insured clinically dead.The family authorized an autopsy.

At trial, plaintiffs' expert witnesses testified that the insured died of suffocation as a result of massive aspiration of his stomach contents.One of the experts, Dr. Tiffany, testified that this is extraordinary, unforeseen and unexpected, and not the result of disease.Dr. John Coe, defendant's expert, was of the opinion that the insured died of a heart attack.He testified that the food material in the lungs, throat and mouth could have been regurgitated after death as a result of the attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

The issues presented here are as follows:

(1) Is death caused by the aspiration of gastric contents outside the terms of this accidental death insurance policy as a matter of law?

(2) Did the trial court err in denying defendants requested jury instructions?

(3) Does the evidence support the verdict?

1.At the close of plaintiffs' case, the defendant moved the court for a directed verdict pursuant to Rule 50.01,Rules of Civil Procedure.Its first argument on this appeal is that the trial court improperly denied this motion, contending that, as a matter of law, the aspiration of stomach contents cannot lead to recovery under the terms of an accidental death policy.

Our review of the lower court's disposition of a motion for a directed verdict is guided by the standard as summarized in J. N. Sullivan & Assoc. v. F. D. Chapman Const. Co.,304 Minn. 334, 231 N.W.2d 87(1975).There we stated:

"It is well settled that a motion for a directed verdict pursuant to Rule 50,Rules of Civil Procedure, presents only a question of law for the trial court regarding the sufficiency of the evidence to present a fact question for the jury to decide.The test to be applied by the lower courtand this court on review is that the motion should be granted only in those unequivocal cases where (1) in the light of the evidence as a whole, it would clearly be the duty of the trial court to set aside a contrary verdict as being manifestly against the entire evidence, or where (2) it would be contrary to the law applicable to the case."304 Minn. 336, 231 N.W.2d 89(emphasis added; footnotes omitted).

After a thorough consideration of the issue, we agree with the trial court that the aspiration of stomach contents can be a proper basis for recovery under the instant policy.

The policy in question provides coverage:

"If the Employee suffers a bodily injury caused by an accident and as a direct result of such injury and, to the exclusion of all other causes, sustains within not more than 90 days after the date of the accident which causes such injury any of the losses listed in the Table of Benefits in this section, then, provided:

(a) the injury occurs while insurance is in force for the Employee under the group policy; and

(b) the loss resulting from the injury is not excluded from coverage in accordance with the terms of Section 3 hereinafter;"⁶

In other words, subject to possible exclusions, the policy covers deaths resulting from accidental means.⁷

Although we have never dealt specifically with the applicability of such an insuring clause to a death resulting from the aspiration of gastric contents, we have had occasion to define the term "accidental means."We have interpreted "accidental means" as something "unforeseen,""unexpected," or "unusual" which enters into the chain of events to cause the result.Gidlund v. Benefit Assn. of Railway Employees,210 Minn. 176, 177, 297 N.W. 710, 711(1941);SeeKluge v. Benefit Assn. of Railway Employees,276 Minn. 263, 149 N.W.2d 681(1967).Applying a similar definition of accidental means, a well reasoned Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision found that death caused by aspiration of gastric contents is included within the coverage of an accidental death policy similar to the one involved in this case.Commercial Insurance Company of Newark, New Jersey v. Orr,379 F.2d 865(8 Cir.1967).⁸In that case, the court upheld the district court's denial of the insurer's motion for a directed verdict, reasoning as follows:

"* * * Concededly, death was caused by suffocation brought about by the presence of aspirated vomitus in the respiratory tract.Aspiration is the inhalation into the lungs of material other than normal air, thus shutting off oxygen and causing suffocation through mechanical blockage of the trachea or windpipe.The aspiration here resulted from a failure of the epiglottis to perform its usual function of closing over the opening of the air passage during

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