United Fidelity Life Ins. Co. v. Roach

• Decision Date: 27 September 1933
• Docket Number: No. 4058.,4058.
• Citation: 63 S.W.2d 723
• Parties: UNITED FIDELITY LIFE INS. CO. v. ROACH et al.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

63 S.W.2d 723

UNITED FIDELITY LIFE INS. CO. v. ROACH et al.

No. 4058.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Amarillo.

September 27, 1933.

Rehearing Denied October 11, 1933.

Appeal from District Court, Potter County; W. E. Gee, Judge.

Action by Sammie E. Roach and others against the United Fidelity Life Insurance Company. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendant appeals from so much of the judgment as required payment of double indemnity.

Reversed and rendered.

Earl Wyatt, of Amarillo, for appellant.

Wm. F. Nix, of Amarillo, for appellees.

MARTIN, Justice.

Appellees instituted suit against appellant as beneficiaries under a life insurance policy in the sum of $2,500 and containing a double indemnity benefit clause for an additional sum of $2,500 on the life of the insured if death resulted from accident as therein defined.

The appellant filed answer, admitting liability in the sum of $2,500 and tendering into court the last-mentioned sum in full settlement of its liability, and pleaded the exception in the policy hereinafter set forth as a defense to that part of the cause of action, under the double indemnity benefit clause of said policy.

The trial was before the court, who rendered judgment for appellees as prayed for.

The original policy was issued by the National Security Life Insurance Company, whose liabilities were thereafter assumed by appellant.

Clauses of the policy affecting the law question decided are as follows:

"The National Security Life Insurance Company agrees that should the death * * * be caused by accident, as herein defined, to pay the Insured named in said policy the sum of $2,500.00 * * *

"This sum shall be paid only if the Company shall receive due proofs:

"(2) That the death of the beneficiary did not result directly or indirectly, wholly or partly from suicide whether sane or insane, from murder, poisoning, bacterial infection, illness or disease of any kind."

The case was tried upon an agreed statement of facts. We quote from this such of the agreed statement as illustrates the law point decided herein:

"That the death of the said Lunnie Boney occurred in substantially the following manner, to-wit: Lunnie Boney lived in a house, the bath room of which was equipped with an automatic hot water heater; the fuel being natural gas and located in said bath room was also a small gas heater also using natural gas. That the automatic heater was vented with three-inch pipes which came through the wall of the house on to the back porch. The open heater was not vented at all. The vents from the hot water heater contained nests that had been built therein by birds which obstructed or partially obstructed the venting system of said hot water heater. On the morning of April 5th the automatic heater had been burning about two hours. The open heater in the bath room was not burning. Lunnie Boney went into the bath room on the 5th day of April, 1932, and remained therein between fifteen minutes and a half hour, and upon emerging therefrom she went immediately to a bed room in the building and complained of being sick, stating that she believed the gas had made her sick. She breathed hard once in a while but she did not have any convulsions. A doctor was called and gave her medical attention, giving her a heart stimulant and strong coffee and she died within about an hour after she came out of the bath room. * * *

"It is further agreed that carbon monoxide fumes are produced from the burning of natural gas under certain conditions and that carbon monoxide gas was produced by the burning of natural gas in the bath room where Lunnie Boney became ill on the day in question and that the inhalation of such fumes resulted in asphyxia, which caused her death. * * *

"That carbon monoxide is an insidious, subtle and deadly poison and is such a substance that when introduced into the human body or absorbed into the blood and acting chemically, is capable of seriously affecting health or destroying life and this is its usual effect upon the healthy body, when inhaled as Lunnie Boney did inhale it on the day in question, and that the inhalation of such carbon monoxide resulted in her death.

"It is further agreed that at the time Lunnie Boney breathed the carbon monoxide gas that the act was upon her part an unconscious act and that she did not know the room contained said gas nor that she was inhaling any poisonous substance nor any injurious gases."

The entire legal controversy here revolves around the construction to be given the last clause of the policy above quoted exempting the insurance company from liability unless the proof of death showed "that the death of the insured did not result directly or indirectly, wholly or partly * * * from poisoning."

It is the claim of appellant that death resulting from inhaling carbon monoxide gas is a death from poisoning and is within the exception exempting the insurance company from liability. It is the contention of the appellees, in substance, that the accidental inhalation of gas which results in death by asphyxiation is not a death from poisoning, and further that the meaning of the word "poisoning" in common use does not include asphyxiation by the involuntary, accidental, and unconscious inhalation of poisonous gases or fumes, and that the use of the word "poisoning" in the exception aforesaid rendered the entire clause...