Phadenhauer v. Germania Life Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 21 February 1872
• Citation: 54 Tenn. 567
• Parties: MARY PHADENHAUER v. GERMANIA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

54 Tenn. 567

MARY PHADENHAUER

v.GERMANIA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

Feb. 21, 1872.

FROM DAVIDSON.

From the Circuit Court, January Term, 1871. NATHANIEL BAXTER, J.M. M. BRIEN, JR., for plaintiff.

The Court below erred in raising a distinction between dying by suicide and by one's own hands. The latter expression was regarded as including, to avoid the policy, every case of dying literally by the party's own hands, except where through accident, or the mental chaos of the fatal moment, the will did not intend the death inflicted by the hand.

Death by suicide is synonymous with death by one's own hands; and the proviso, as a whole, exacts, to avoid the policy criminal self-destruction. There must be mind enough for criminal intent, else the death of the party is not, within the legal import of the words, death “by suicide or by his own hands.” See 4 Hill, 73, affirmed in 8 N. Y. (4 Selden), 299; 54 Maine, 224; 1 Dillon's U. S. Cir. C. Rep., 403 (Terry v. Life Ins. Co.); 6 Bush (Ky.), 268; and cases cited by the foregoing.

The policy insures against death from disease. Insanity is (brain) disease. Death from insanity, or from an act instigated by insanity (which is the same thing), is as truly death from disease as death from apoplexy or consumption.

The English doctrine agrees with the charge below, and so do some of the American cases; but the weight of American authority supports the position I maintain.

JOHN RUHM for defendant:

Two doctrines are maintained as to what suffices to avoid a life policy under the proviso in question: one, that if the purpose of self-destruction be intentionally and intelligently carried out by a proper adaption of means to ends, the act is suicide on the part of the insured, or death by his own hands, although insanity exist to such an extent that he may not be able to appreciate the moral qualities of the act; the other, confining the import of the proviso to criminal self-destruction, and requiring sanity enough for criminal intent. The Court below held the former doctrine, and in this was supported by the English and the preponderance of the American authorities. See Borradaile v. Hunter, 5 Man. & Gr., 639; Schwabe v. Clift, 2 Car. & Kirwan, 134--affirmed by Exchequer Chamber in 3 Man. & Gr., 437; Dufaur v. Professional Life Ass. Co., 25 Beav., 602; White v. British Empire Mutual Life Ass. Co., 38 L. I. N. S., ch. 53; Stormont v. Waterloo Life & Casualty Ass. Co., 1 F. & F. Nisi Prius, 22; Dean v. Am. Life Ins. Co., 4 Allen (Mass.), 96; Nimick v. Mut. Ben. Life Ins. Co. (U. S. Cir. Ct. W. Dist. Penn.), 3 Brewster, 502; Cooper v. Mass. Mut. Life Ins. Co., 102 Mass., 227; Gay v. Union Mut. Life Ins. Co., 9 Blatch. (U. S. Cir. Ct.), 142; Eq. Life Ins. Society v. Patterson, 41 Ga., 338.

The New York cases and Terry v. Life Ins. Co., U. S. Cir. Ct., Kansas, are all I have found contra.

The last named case concedes that self-destruction raises no presumption of insanity. The onus of proving this, to save the policy, where the assured has taken his own life, rests on the party claiming thereunder. See also 6 Bush, 268, citing 5 Bush, 362, and 16 B. Mon., 587; Nimick v. Mut. Ben. Life Ins. Co., already cited; 1 Bigelow, 694.

NICHOLSON, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

Plaintiff is the widow of Andrew Phadenhauer, who committed suicide in Nashville in 1868. She sues the defendant for one thousand dollars, the amount for which his life was insured by defendant. The contract of insurance contains a clause by which the policy is void, if the assured “shall die by suicide, or by his own hands.” Upon the trial in the Circuit Court of Davidson county the plaintiff introduced proof to show that the assured was insane at the time of his suicide, for the purpose of avoiding the above recited clause in the contract. Under the charge of the Circuit Judge the jury found a verdict for the defendant. The plaintiff has appealed.

The error relied on for a reversal is assigned upon the charge of the Circuit Judge. After instructing the jury correctly as to the legal definition of suicide, the Judge said: “You will therefore look to the proof, and see whether the deceased was insane at all; if so, whether he was insane at the time of killing himself; and if so, whether he was so insane at the time of the act as not to have capacity to discern right from wrong; for to constitute suicide, it is not sufficient that he had mind enough to know that means employed to destroy life would produce the result; he must have had mind to know that in a religious and moral point of view it was wrong. If he had not that much mind at the time of committing the act, he was incapable of committing suicide, and the contract will not be void by reason of the proviso.” After thus instructing the jury in regard to insanity as applicable to a case of suicide, he next proceeds to discuss the meaning of the words, “die by his own hands,” used in the contract. He tells the jury that these were not used in the contract as synonymous with “suicide,” but were intended to cover some case that would not amount to technical suicide. He says: “It was intended to extend to all cases where the party had mind enough, and sufficient knowledge of physical laws to know that the means he employed would produce death, and were employed with that intent, though the obliquity of his mind might be such as not to understand that it was a crime.”

After giving ample illustrations of his meaning, he concludes: “I am of opinion, therefore, that the terms ‘suicide or by his own hands' embrace all cases of voluntary self-destruction where the party does the act voluntarily with the intent to kill himself, and has intelligence enough at the time to know that the means employed will produce that result, whatever may be the moral condition of his mind as to its perception of right and wrong; further than that, I think neither of the terms, nor both of them together extend.” “On the other hand,” he continues, “if the party is so insane that he knows not what he is about, or if his imagination is haunted by frightful spectres, so that he jumps out of a high window to escape them and is killed, etc., and a thousand other cases that might be supposed where the death is the work of his own hands, but at the same time an involuntary act into which he has been madly drawn by the frenzy of the moment, not knowing or understanding the danger on which he is rushing, and neither willing nor intending to produce the result; in none of these cases would he be guilty of suicide, or death by his own hands, within the meaning of the contract.” If we comprehend this charge, the Judge intended to instruct the jury, first, that if the deceased had mind enough to know that the means employed would produce death, but did not have mind enough to know that his act was morally wrong, he was not guilty of suicide, and therefore the contract of insurance was not void for suicide. Second, that if the deceased had mind enough to know that the means he employed would produce death, and these means were employed with that intent, but through obliquity of mind he did not understand that his act would be criminal, this would be the taking of his life “by his own hands,” within the meaning of the contract, and therefore in that case the contract would be void. And, third, that if the deceased was so insane as not to know what he was about, but was driven madly and involuntarily to the taking of his own life, without intending it, he would not be guilty of suicide or of taking his life with his own hands, in the sense of the words as used in the contract, and therefore in that case the contract of insurance would not be void.

The first duty that devolves upon us is to ascertain the true meaning and intention of the parties to the contract of insurance; and...