Lehman v. Great W. Accident Ass'n

• Decision Date: 15 December 1911
• Citation: 155 Iowa 737,133 N.W. 752
• Parties: LEHMAN v. GREAT WESTERN ACCIDENT ASS'N.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

155 Iowa 737

133 N.W. 752

LEHMAN

v.GREAT WESTERN ACCIDENT ASS'N.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 15, 1911.

Appeal from District Court, Woodbury County; F. R. Gaynor, Judge.

Action on an accident policy to recover a stipulated benefit for disability resulting from accidental means. At the conclusion of plaintiff's evidence, the court, on defendant's motion, directed a verdict in its favor, and from a judgment on this verdict plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.C. R. Jones, for appellant.

Bailey & Stipp and Milchrist & Scott, for appellee.

McCLAIN, J.

The facts which the evidence introduced for plaintiff tended to show were that plaintiff, holding a policy in the defendant company, providing a stipulated indemnity for loss of time resulting from disability due to accidental means, engaged for three successive evenings in the violent exercise involved in the game of bowling or tenpins, and that in the course of the game on the third evening, which was January 20, 1909, he threw a certain ball, and strained his side. He felt the strain at once, but paid no attention to it. Later, as it grew worse, he quit bowling. The next day he had a sore side, and the day following, in the afternoon, he was confined to his bed, and called a physician, who found a tenderness of the muscles of the front and back of the abdomen on the right side. In the opinion of the physician, this tenderness was due to a strain. The muscles were tender and slightly swollen, as could be ascertained by applying the hands to the right side of the abdomen. The physician further testified that on the next day, or the day following, the plaintiff developed a case of appendicitis, which the physician believed could be traced directly to the irregular working of the muscles and parts of the body around the abdominal region, which resulted from the strain. The physician further testified that on his first examination he found no indication of appendicitis. An operation became necessary and eventually a second operation, so that the plaintiff was disabled from carrying on his occupation of bank cashier for more than four months, for which disability he claimed the sum of $276 under the provisions of his policy.

By the language of the policy, plaintiff was insured “against the effects of personal bodily injury caused solely by external, violent and accidental means,” and the important question in this case is whether the disability due to appendicitis was within such provision of the policy. Much ingenuity has been exercised by the courts in attempting to define “accident,” but we refrain from entering upon this general field of inquiry, for the reason that the term is of popular significance only, and that it must be defined for various purposes in accordance with somewhat different rules. It may be necessary to determine whether an injury is accidental, for the purpose of excluding liability therefor as the result of negligence; but with this we have now no concern. Our inquiry must be limited to the more concrete question, arising under a policy of accident insurance, as to what is an injury caused solely by external, violent, and accidental means; for the defendant company had the right to limit its liability so as to exclude injuries not of that character.

In this case we have to consider a voluntary act of the insured, not intended nor reasonably calculated to produce an injury of any kind; an unexpected and unintended result, which may, in one sense, be called an accidental result, in the nature of an injury, which was the straining of the muscles on the right side of the abdomen, producing a swelling and an irregular action of such muscles, this injury being slight in its nature and not reasonably calculated to produce disability; and, finally, a diseased condition of the appendix, due to the swelling and irregular action of the strained muscles, resulting in the disability for which plaintiff seeks recovery. In order to properly apply the language of the policy, we must ascertain whether there was an external, violent, and accidental means, the proximate result of which was the attack of appendicitis which caused the disability.

The act of bowling in itself was not an accidental means, for it was voluntary. The act in itself did not cause the appendicitis. There is no evidence tending to show that, without the intervening accidental result of swollen and strained muscles, causing friction of the appendix by their irregular action, the disability complained of could have resulted. The accidental means, therefore, causing the disability was not the external and violent act of bowling, but the internal condition of swollen and strained muscles. True it is that this condition was discoverable externally by the physician, but likewise many internal conditions of portions of the body resulting in disease may be discovered by the physician through external symptoms.

It would be futile to attempt a discussion of all the cases which might be cited as having some bearing on the solution of the question before us. We think that a reasonable solution may be found in considering a few of our own cases on the subject.

In Carnes v. Iowa State T. M. Ass'n, 106 Iowa, 281, 76 N. W. 683, 68 Am. St. Rep. 306, we held that death from voluntarily taking an overdose of morphine tablets, the act of taking the medicine being intentional, both as to the thing taken and the amount, was not a death due to external, violent, and accidental means; a distinction being insisted upon between accidental means and accidental result.

In Feder v. Iowa State T. M. Ass'n, 107 Iowa, 538, 78 N. W. 252, 43 L. R. A. 693, 70 Am. St. Rep. 212, we held that death due to the rupturing of a blood vessel, directly resulting from the voluntary physical effort of closing a window shutter was not death occurring from an accidental cause; the distinction between a voluntary act as the means and an unexpected result being again insisted upon.

In Delaney v. Modern Accident Club, 121 Iowa, 528, 97 N. W. 91, 63 L. R. A. 603, our holding was that death due to blood poisoning, resulting from an accidental cut on the finger, was a death resulting “solely from accidental injuries”; the rule being announced that death from disease, which was the natural, though not the necessary, consequence of an external, accidental, physical injury, is an accidental death, and not exclusively a death...