Courtemanche v. Supreme Court I.O.F.

• Decision Date: 08 March 1904
• Citation: 136 Mich. 30,98 N.W. 749
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: COURTEMANCHE v. SUPREME COURT I. O. F.

98 N.W. 749

136 Mich. 30

COURTEMANCHE v. SUPREME COURT I. O. F.

Supreme Court of Michigan

March 8, 1904

Error to Circuit Court, Saginaw County; Emmet L. Beach, Judge.

Action by Emma Courtemanche against the Supreme Court of the Independent Order of Foresters. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant brings error. Affirmed.

Dickinson Stevenson, Cullen, Warren & Butzel, for appellant.

W. F Denfeld, for appellee.

HOOKER J.

The plaintiff is the widow of one Oliver Courtemanche, and beneficiary in a certificate of membership in the defendant society, a mutual benefit association. This policy contained the following limitations upon, or exceptions to, liability viz.: '(1) Except as provided in sub-sections 2 and 3 of this section, the contracts for benefits heretofore or hereafter undertaken by the supreme court, do not include assurance against self-destruction or suicide, whether the member be sane or insane. (2) Any brother who commits suicide shall ipso facto avoid all his benefit certificates, and ipso facto forfeit all benefits whatsoever which his beneficiary or beneficiaries, heir or heirs, or legal personal representative or representatives would otherwise have been entitled under the constitution and by-laws to receive from the supreme court, or from any branch of the supreme court; * * *' subsection 1 being printed on the policy. In an action brought upon this certificate, the plaintiff recovered death benefits to the amount of $1,000, that being the face of the policy. The defendant has asked us to review the cause upon error.

The most important question arises over a claim that if the death was due to the voluntary taking of carbolic acid by deceased, not with the intent of causing death, but to frighten his wife into giving him money, she could not recover. The evidence was practically conclusive that the deceased died from taking carbolic acid, and there was proof from which the jury might have reached either of three conclusions: (1) That it was a case of suicide in the ordinary sense. (2) That the drug was taken under the belief that it was another and harmless drug. (3) That it was knowingly and intentionally taken for the purpose of frightening the wife, and not with an intention to cause death. The court instructed the jury that in the latter case the beneficiary would not be precluded from recovering upon the policy, and error is assigned upon this instruction.

Counsel for defendant cite, in support of their contention, the case of Lawrence v. Mut. Life Ins. Co. of N. Y., 5 Ill, App. 282. In that cause the deceased came to his death from repeated doses of laudanum, the first prescribed by a druggist, and others taken upon deceased's own judgment, after severe vomiting, under the belief that he had vomited up a portion of that taken. The policies contained the following provision: 'If the said person upon whose death the policy matures shall die in consequence of a duel, or of the violation of law, or by disease, violence or accident brought about by intoxication, or shall impair his health by narcotics, or alcoholic stimulants, * * * the company shall be released from all liability on account of this contract. It is hereby declared and agreed that the self-destruction of the person, whether voluntary or involuntary, and whether he be sane or insane at the time, is not a risk assumed by the company in this contract, but in every such case the company will, upon demand made and the surrender of this policy, accompanied with satisfactory proofs of such death, within sixty days after its occurrence, pay the net reserve held upon it by this company at the beginning of the year in which death occurs, calculated by the present legal standard of the state of New York, first deducting therefrom any indebtedness which shall have accrued to the company on account of this contract.' The court said: 'The present appeal, then, must be decided precisely as though the defendant had expressly admitted that the deceased, at the time of his death, was sane; that his death was involuntary, and that it occurred without negligence on his part, and as the wholly unexpected, and therefore accidental, result of means which he was using in good faith for the purpose of alleviating his physical suffering. The question, then, is, whether the accidental death of a sane person is within the meaning of the foregoing condition of the policies in suit, simply because some act of the deceased, performed with no design or intention of producing death, but for an entirely innocent purpose, and without negligence, happens to be the proximate cause of his death. We are clearly of the opinion that a purely accidental death can in no proper sense be termed an act of self-destruction. In all the cases where construction has been given by the courts to conditions in life policies relating to the death of the insured by his own hand, the terms 'suicide,' 'self-destruction,' and 'death by his own hand,' have been held to be practically synonymous. To say of a purely accidental death that it was a 'suicide,' or a 'death by his own hand,' would be simply an abuse of language. That which is purely accidental or fortuitous can no more be charged to the account of the person whose act happens by the occasion of the accident than to that of any one else. It is only where death results from an express design on the part of the deceased, or from some act which, though performed with no intention of producing death, is of itself culpably negligent, that the deceased can be charged with the responsibility of self-destruction. If a person in the pursuit of a proper object, and in the exercise of due care, should accidentally fall into a body of water and be drowned, or should unwittingly expose himself to the smallpox or the yellow fever, not knowing at the time of the existence of the contagion, and die of the disease, it would in no proper sense be a case of self-destruction. If in either case, however, he should be culpably negligent in exposing himself to danger, although not intending to destroy his life, he would be, in the common judgment of men, the efficient instrument of his own death. Upon principles quite analogous to the foregoing, it may be held that in case of a sane person, where there is an absence both of intention and culpable negligence, the death of the insured must be regarded as accidental, and not within a proviso against self-destruction. With this construction, full effect may be given to all of the words of the condition in the policies under consideration. Voluntary self-destruction obviously can mean nothing more than the taking of one's life purposely and intentionally. Involuntary self-destruction would then include all those cases where a person, without intending to accomplish his own death, carelessly and negligently does acts which may naturally and probably result, and do in fact result, in death. The condition would thus be held to include all cases where there exists on the part of the insured any direct and immediate legal or moral responsibility for his own death. To go beyond this, and relieve the insurers from all liability in all cases where the acts of the insured, without design or negligence on his part, do in fact contribute to shorten or terminate his life, would in most cases render life policies of very little value to the insured.'

The foregoing indicates that the court was of the opinion that death through culpable negligence would not be covered by the terms of the policy. That this was at most a dictum appears from the following conclusion of the opinion: 'It follows that the defense in this case rests solely upon a charge against the insured of culpable negligence. This fact seems to be recognized by the learned counsel for the defendant, and accordingly they have endeavored in their argument to demonstrate the negligence of the insured from the evidence in the case. If they desired to avail themselves of this defense, they should have allowed the question of negligence to be presented to the jury; but having withdrawn it from the only tribunal legally competent to decide it, they are not now in a position to insist that any negligence has been proved.'

The case was again tried, resulting in a verdict for the plaintiff. The court charged, in substance, that the plaintiff should recover, unless the death was the result of 'either gross carelessness, or circumstances constituting him a suicide,' and continued as follows: 'The jury are further instructed, on the subject of negligence and gross carelessness, that so far as the defense in this case depends thereon, that the burden of proof rests upon the defendant; and that gross carelessness consists of something more than the omission to do that which under the circumstances of a case an ordinarily careful man would have done to avoid injury.'

The appellate court criticised the charge in this language 'It is plain that these instructions place upon the language of the policy an interpretation quite different from the one adopted by us on the former appeal. In our view, the exemption of the insurance company from liability depends, not upon the degree of the negligence of the insured, but upon its culpability. Indeed, we are unable to see how the ordinary division of negligence into degrees, such as slight, ordinary, and gross, can have any application here, though it may serve a very useful purpose in cases where the doctrine of contributory or comparative negligence is invoked. The true inquiry here is whether the death of the insured was the proximate result of his own negligent act,...