Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Siebert
| Decision Date | 18 July 1934 |
| Docket Number | No. 9831.,9831. |
| Parties | METROPOLITAN LIFE INS. CO. v. SIEBERT et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Allen L. Oliver, of Cape Girardeau, Mo. (R. B. Oliver, R. B. Oliver, Jr., and Elmer A. Strom, all of Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Leroy A. Lincoln, of New York City, on the brief), for appellant.
S. P. Dalton, of Cape Girardeau, Mo. (A. M. Spradling, of Cape Girardeau, Mo., on the brief), for appellees.
Before GARDNER and WOODROUGH, Circuit Judges, and MARTINEAU, District Judge.
Appellees as plaintiffs sued appellant insurance company to recover as beneficiaries under an accident insurance policy in the usual and customary form, insuring against death by accidental means. They alleged that the insured shot himself while insane.
Defendant admitted that it executed and delivered the policy sued on. As a first defense it pleaded that the insured intentionally shot himself. Then it pleaded as a further defense clause 9 of the policy sued on, the material applicable parts of which are as follows:
From a verdict and judgment in favor of plaintiffs this appeal is prosecuted.
The insured was a business man of Cape Girardeau, Mo. On the morning of August 26, 1931, he drove away from his home in an automobile. The following day about 3 o'clock in the afternoon his body was found on a country lane about two and one-half miles from Cape Girardeau. The surrounding circumstances clearly showed that he had shot himself. Both sides introduced much testimony as to his sanity at the time of his death.
The simplest and most logical way to decide the issues in this case is to determine what the law of Missouri is in such a case. Missouri has what is known as the Missouri Suicide Statute, which is section 5740, Revised Statutes of Missouri 1929 (Mo. St. Ann. § 5740, p. 4385), and reads as follows: "In all suits upon policies of insurance on life hereafter issued by any company doing business in this state, to a citizen of this state, it shall be no defense that the insured committed suicide, unless it shall be shown to the satisfaction of the court or jury trying the cause, that the insured contemplated suicide at the time he made his application for the policy, and any stipulation in the policy to the contrary shall be void."
Both the federal courts and the Missouri state courts hold that this statute applies to death by one's own hand, even though the person committing the act was insane. They hold that the defense that the insured came to his death by his own hand while insane is avoided though expressly excepted by the policy, and that in accident policies such as the one involved here suicide while insane, being unintentional, is accidental. Knights Templars' & Masons' Life Indemnity Co. v. Jarman, 187 U. S. 197, 200, 23 S. Ct. 108, 47 L. Ed. 139; Brunswick v. Standard Accident Insurance Co., 278 Mo. 154, 166, 213 S. W. 45, 7 A. L. R. 1213.
Disregarding for the present the effect of the last part of clause 9 of the policy, under this state of the law it devolved upon plaintiff to show two things, first, that the insured shot himself, and, next, that when he did so he was insane. About the first there is no dispute. The question as to the insanity of the insured at the time he committed suicide was submitted to the jury and it found in favor of plaintiffs. There was substantial testimony upon which to base this finding. Accepting the finding of the jury that the insured was insane at the time he killed himself as a fact, does the provision of the policy providing that all insurance under it shall be suspended if the insured shall become...
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