New York Life Ins. Co. v. Beason
| Decision Date | 07 June 1934 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 458. |
| Citation | 229 Ala. 140,155 So. 530 |
| Parties | NEW YORK LIFE INS. CO. v. BEASON. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Rehearing Denied June 28, 1934.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; J. Russell McElroy Judge.
Action on a policy of life insurance by Prudence Beason against the New York Life Insurance Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals.
Affirmed.
Stokely Scrivner, Dominick & Smith, of Birmingham, for appellant.
W. A Jacobs, of Birmingham, for appellee.
Suit by plaintiff against the New York Life Insurance Company upon a policy of life insurance, insuring the life of Willie Octavia Beason, with the plaintiff as beneficiary.
For all purposes of this case, we may regard and treat it as having been tried on the plea of the general issue, and a special plea setting up that the insured committed suicide, there being a provision in the policy contract that "in the event of self-destruction during the first two insurance years, whether sane or insane, the insurance under this policy shall be a sum equal to the premiums thereon which have been paid to and received by the company, and no more"; and in this plea the defendant duly made tender of the premiums paid, and kept the tender good by the payment of the tender money into court.
A stipulation was entered into between the parties, before entering upon the trial, that the defendant company had due notice of the death of the insured; that it occurred on November 26, 1930; that the policy sued on was the property of the plaintiff; and that the defendant, prior to the filing of the suit, had tendered to the plaintiff the sum of $23.67, asserting at the time that the amount so tendered was the full amount due under the suicide clause of the policy.
There were verdict and judgment for the plaintiff assessing her damages at $1,200.
The insured was a young married woman still in her twenties, and apparently happily married. The testimony relied upon to show that her death was the result of suicide was wholly circumstantial.
Only two errors are here argued and insisted upon for a reversal of the cause. The defendant, upon the conclusion of the court's oral charge, requested the following charge which was in writing: "The court charges the jury that the burden is on the plaintiff to reasonably satisfy you from the evidence in this case that assured Octavia Buckner did not commit suicide."
The above charge misplaced the burden of proof, and was therefore refused without error. This case is wholly different from the case of Protective Life Ins. Co. v. Swink, 222 Ala. 496, 132 So. 728, 729, as we shall undertake to demonstrate.
The rule of our decisions is that, where the plaintiff, in stating his cause of action, must affirm a negative, he has the burden of proving the negative averment, unless the facts are peculiarly within the knowledge of the defendant. Protective Life Ins. Co. v. Swink, supra; Rogers v. Brooks, 105 Ala. 549, 17 So. 97; Pollak v. Winter, 166 Ala. 255, 51 So. 998, 52 So. 829, 53 So. 339, 139 Am. St. Rep. 33.
In the Swink Case, supra, the action was on the double indemnity clause of the policy, and, by the contract as pleaded, the defendant agreed to pay the plaintiff, as the named beneficiary, the "sum of ten thousand dollars in the event (the death of the insured) resulted from bodily injury within ninety days after such injury, directly and independently of all other causes, effected solely through external, violent and accidental means." The complaint in that case followed and was predicated upon the above provision of the contract. It therefore devolved upon the plaintiff to make good by proof the negative averment that Swink's death did not result from suicide, or, to state the proposition more accurately, the burden was, by force of plaintiff's averment, upon her to show that the death was due to accident, and not to suicide.
In the policy contract sued upon, in the general clause, the defendant obligated itself to pay the named beneficiary, upon due proof of death of the insured, the sum of $1,000, but by a subsequent clause-separate and distinct-constituting an exception, it was stipulated...
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