State v. Daues

• Decision Date: 22 December 1925
• Docket Number: No. 26472.,26472.
• Citation: 278 S.W. 735
• Parties: STATE ex rel. SHOEMAKER v. DAUES el al., Judges.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

278 S.W. 735

STATE ex rel. SHOEMAKER v. DAUES el al., Judges.

No. 26472.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

December 22, 1925.

Certiorari to St. Louis Court of Appeals.

Certiorari by the State, on the relation of Mary C. Shoemaker, against Charles H. Daues and two others, as Judges of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, to review judgment of that court. Writ quashed.

J. D. Wilson, of Nokomis, Ill., and F. H. Bacon, of St. Louis, for relator.

Jones, Hocker, Sullivan & Angert, of St. Louis, for respondents.

HIGBEE, C.

On the application of the relator, a writ of certiorari was issued to review the judgment of the St. Louis Court of Appeals reversing the judgment of the trial court in an action by relator upon a policy issued by the Central Business Men's Association, an Illinois corporation, insuring the life of her husband, in which action the plaintiff recovered the full amount of the policy. The policy insured Dr. Samuel E. Shoemaker "against loss resulting from bodily injuries effected, directly or independently of all other causes, through accidental means (suicide, sane or insane, is not covered) as specified in the following schedule: * * * For loss of life, $5,000."

This is an Illinois contract. Dr. Shoemaker was a patient in a hospital in Springfield, Ill., and died on October 11, 1919, as the result of self-inflicted injuries. The opinion recites:

"There is nothing in the record in the present case tending in the slightest degree to show that the insured killed himself accidentally. His physical movements, as shown by the undisputed evidence, are not susceptible of any such interpretation. He cut his throat three times with his pocketknife, laying the throat open and severing the jugular vein. He then raised the window of his room, climbed upon the window sill, bent over, bowed his head and threw himself head foremost to the granitoid pavement below. From these physical movements, an intent to commit self-destruction is as manifest as if he had hanged himself, or shot himself, or taken a deadly poison. There is no hint or suggestion in the evidence that he came to his death by accidentally cutting his throat or accidentally falling from the window, or by the accidental or intentional act or acts of any other person. Besides, the plaintiff does not predicate her alleged right of recovery upon the death of the insured by any such accidental movements or acts. She did not so plead her case, nor did she try it on that theory below. She alleges in her petition that the insured, `while delirious from the effect of drugs and illness and unable to understand or comprehend the nature or consequences of his act, wounded himself in the throat with a pocketknife and threw himself from the window of the hospital, striking with violence on the granitoid pavement, which said injuries so received resulted in death.' The petition clearly declares upon accidental death, in the sense that the insured took his own life when he was in such a condition of mind as to be incapable of understanding or comprehending the nature or consequences of the act of self-destruction.

"But it is urged by plaintiff's counsel that the insured in this case, when he committed the act or acts which caused his death, was neither sane nor insane, but was in a state of delirium, which so disturbed or deranged his mental functions that he did not know what he was doing, and was unconscious of the physical nature and consequences of his acts, and that therefore his self-destruction was not `suicide, sane or insane,' within the meaning of those words as used in the exemption clause of the Policy. Counsel on both sides of this case have brought to our attention many definitions of `delirium' and `insanity' as formulated by eminent authorities. It would serve no useful purpose to enter into a discussion of the abstruse learning involved in these definitions. After having read them all, we have not the slightest hesitancy to say that a person whose mental functions are (so) disturbed or deranged by delirium that he is unconscious of the physical nature and consequences of the act of self-destruction is, in contemplation of law, insane.

"We find no recognition in the books of any state or condition of mind which is neither sane nor insane. If the insured, when he killed himself, was not `insane,' then he was `sane.' The one term is but the antipode of the other. ...