The Continental Insurance Company v. Jachnichen
| Citation | 10 N.E. 636,110 Ind. 59 |
| Decision Date | 09 March 1887 |
| Docket Number | 12,278 |
| Parties | The Continental Insurance Company v. Jachnichen |
| Court | Supreme Court of Indiana |
From the Ripley Circuit Court.
Judgment reversed, with costs.
J. O Cravens, A. Stockinger and J. W. Gordon, for appellant.
J. G Berkshire and J. L. Benham, for appellee.
Jachnichen sued the Continental Insurance Company upon a policy of insurance, to recover the value of a barn and its contents, which the complaint alleged were covered by the policy, and which were alleged to have been destroyed by a fire, of unknown origin, in September, 1884.
Among other defences, the company answered that the assured had himself purposely burned the property with the intent to defraud the insurance company.
The plaintiff below recovered. The only question presented by the record, which, in view of the defective condition of the bill of exceptions purporting to contain the evidence, can be examined on this appeal, involves the propriety of an instruction given by the court at the trial.
In its fifth charge the court told the jury, that in order to maintain the defence, that the plaintiff had himself purposely destroyed the property for which he was seeking to recover, with intent to defraud the company, the latter must establish the truth of such defence beyond a reasonable doubt.
In support of the charge thus given, it is contended, in effect, that the defence relied on imputes to the plaintiff the crime of arson; that when a crime is thus specifically charged, whether it be in a civil or criminal action, the rule is applicable, that before the issue can be found against the party thus charged, the evidence must be of such weight and certainty as to exclude all reasonable doubt of the truth of the charge made.
The question presented has been the subject of much discussion in the reported cases, as well as by writers upon the law of evidence.
The statute regulating criminal procedure requires that where there is a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt, he must be acquitted. The rule which demands greater certainty and weight of proof in criminal than is required in civil cases, has its foundation in the tender regard in which the law holds the life and liberty of the subject.
It had its origin, and was moulded into form and consistency, when the penal code of England visited upon offences of a comparatively trivial character the most harsh and cruel punishments. To mitigate the rigor of a code sometimes administered with severity, humane judges engrafted upon the common law the rule that no one should be convicted of a crime which affected life or liberty, until his guilt was established with such a degree of certainty as to exclude every reasonable doubt. Having grown up out of the humanity of the law, the rule is very properly retained in criminal cases, even after the reasons for it have in a great measure ceased to exist. Indeed, there is little of any rule whose origin, however remote, is found in the source whence this rule came, which should either be dissipated or obscured in the administration of the law. The consequences of a mistake, when life and liberty are involved, are so overwhelming and irreparable that the integrity of the rule which requires a greater degree of certainty and caution in such a case, before coming to a conclusion, than in a case which affects property merely, should be steadily maintained and intelligently applied. This can only be done by limiting it to the class of cases which called it into being. To extend it, is to render it obscure, and dissipate its benign effect, in the cases where its benefits should be fully realized.
In some exceptional cases, the doctrine that where a criminal act is charged in a civil action, the crime imputed must be established beyond a reasonable doubt, has gained recognition, notably in cases of libel and slander, when the defendant undertook to justify the uttering or publishing of that which amounted to a felony, and in cases where the action involved the burning of property under circumstances which amounted to arson. The rule was first extended to cases of libel and slander in England. The reason for the extension of the rule there was, that if, upon the trial of a plea of justification of a charge which imputed a felony, the defendant proved the plea, the plaintiff was subject to be put upon trial for the felony proved, without the intervention of a grand jury. The verdict in such a case was equivalent to an indictment of the plaintiff. Cook v. Field, 3 Esp. 133; 2 Hale, star p. 150; 1 Chitty Crim. Law, 164; Polston v. See, 54 Mo. 291, 298; Ellis v. Buzzell, 60 Me. 209.
No such reason ever existed in this country for the application of the rule, and it may, therefore, be said, it has been applied without any adequate reason. It may well be doubted whether its application can be supported upon principle, notwithstanding the precedents in its favor.
In the case last cited, speaking of the rule as applicable to a case of slander, the Supreme Court of Maine says: "But we think it time to limit the application of a rule which was originally adopted in favorem vitoe in the days of a sanguinary penal code, to cases arising on the criminal docket, and no longer to suffer it to obstruct or encumber the action of juries in civil suits sounding only in damages."
Leaving the subject so far as it relates to cases of slander and libel for further examination, when such a case arises, it is only proper to add here, that the current of modern authority tends strongly in the direction indicated by the Supreme Court of Maine, in Ellis v. Buzzell, supra. 10 Am. L. Rev. 642.
In respect to other civil actions, in which the commission of a crime is in issue, Campbell, J., disposed of the whole subject in the following terse declaration: Elliott v. VanBuren, 33 Mich. 49 (20 Am. R. 668). So, in the case of Gordon v. Parmelee, 15 Gray 413, Dewey, J., said: "It is better that the rule be uniform in all civil cases, leaving the instruction 'that the jury must be satisfied of the guilt of the party beyond a reasonable doubt' to apply solely to criminal cases."
As a matter of course, when an infamous charge is preferred, whether it be in a civil or criminal case, the same presumptions of innocence attach...
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