Prudential Ins. Co. of America v. Herndon

• Decision Date: 13 December 1929
• Docket Number: 19722.
• Citation: 151 S.E. 399,40 Ga.App. 692
• Parties: PRUDENTIAL INS. CO. OF AMERICA v. HERNDON.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

151 S.E. 399

40 Ga.App. 692

PRUDENTIAL INS. CO. OF AMERICA v. HERNDON.

No. 19722.

Court of Appeals of Georgia, Second Division

December 13, 1929

Rehearing Denied Jan. 23, 1930.

Syllabus by the Court.

Under the terms of the policy sued on, the defendant was liable for accidental injuries only when effected solely through external, violent means. According to the plaintiff's case, the injury, while accidental in the sense that the effect of his act was not the natural and probable consequence to be expected, the contagion having been contracted in the ordinary, normal tissues of the body without the aid of any external, violent injury, there could be no recovery under the policy sued on.

Error from Superior Court, Fulton County; John D. Humphries, Judge.

Suit by F. E. Herndon against the Prudential Insurance Company of America. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant brings error. Reversed.

Spalding MacDougald & Sibley, of Atlanta, for plaintiff in error.

J Wightman Bowden and J. C. Bowden, both of Atlanta, for defendant in error.

JENKINS P.J. (after stating the foregoing facts).

Pretermitting any discussion of the questions raised by the record, except the one last mentioned in the foregoing statement of facts there is nothing in the evidence to indicate that the injury complained of was effected solely from external, violent, and accidental means, within the meaning of the policy sued on. The evidence does not indicate that the use of the towel effected any violent, external injury to the eye; the evidence does not indicate that the organ had already become thus injured so as, for that reason and in the natural course of events, to subject it to infection from the ordinary use of the towel, as was the case in Bell v. State Life Ins Co., 151 Ga. 57, 105 S.E. 846. So far as all the plaintiff's evidence goes to indicate, the disease was contracted without the intervention of any external and violent means. Since all germ diseases, whether contagious or infectious, are contracted by taking within the body the disease organisms, an insurer might be liable for the contraction of any such diseases, whether through the mouth, nose, eye, throat, or lungs, by reason of any ordinary exposure, but for the additional provision in the accident policy, which distinguishes it from a health policy, that the company is liable only for accidental injuries effected solely through external, violent means. In ...