United Life & Acc. Ins. Co. v. Prostic

• Decision Date: 15 January 1936
• Docket Number: 64.
• Citation: 182 A. 421,169 Md. 535
• Parties: UNITED LIFE & ACCIDENT INS. CO. v. PROSTIC.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

182 A. 421

169 Md. 535

UNITED LIFE & ACCIDENT INS. CO. v. PROSTIC.

No. 64.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

January 15, 1936

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore City; Eli Frank Judge.

Action by Eva Prostic against the United Life & Accident Insurance Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals.

Reversed without a new trial.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, OFFUTT, PARKE, SLOAN, MITCHELL SHEHAN, and JOHNSON, JJ.

Webster S. Blades, of Baltimore (Blades & Rosenfeld, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

Simon E. Sobeloff, of Baltimore (Harry M. Miller and Wm. Taft Feldman, both of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.

BOND Chief Judge.

The appeal is from a judgment for additional, double indemnity payable under insurance against death "as the result of bodily injury * * * through external, violent, and accidental means, * * * provided such death shall not result from homicide." Death resulted from injuries received by the insured in a severe beating by robbers, and the appellant contends that as it resulted from homicide the further indemnity is not payable. The fact that a severe beating by robbers was the cause of death is not denied by the plaintiff. On the contrary, it is relied upon as bringing the death within the accident insurance. Its occurrence is found only from evidence on the plaintiff's behalf. The defendant, on the other hand, has raised no question of the propriety of classing such a death as one from injury through accidental means. It has paid the ordinary, single indemnity and has urged only that the death, on the face of the plaintiff's evidence, resulted from homicide. This court rests the decision on that contention alone.

The trial court, applying the reasoning of some of the cases cited, refused prayers of the defendant insurer for a ruling that the evidence did not, as a matter of law, support recovery. The evidence is that on the night of March 24, 1934, in the neighborhood of 9 o'clock, the insured, a shoemaker in Baltimore City, coming home from his work, fell forward into a chair exclaiming, "Oh, my heart, my heart!" And he explained that two colored men had entered his shop pretending at first to have come for a pair of shoes, and then, taking him by his neck, beat him mercilessly, tore his clothes, cut out his pockets, and took his money. At home, he continued his complaints of pain about the heart, clutching his chest, even when, after two weeks, he appeared much improved and no damage was any longer apparent. He died on May 2, and physicians testified that death was in their opinion due to a coronary thrombosis induced by the beating on March 24.

Clauses in accident insurance policies on the causes of death have been fruitful of conflict in constructions. It must be by a true process of construction that the effect of a clause is ascertained; that is, either by accepting a meaning plainly appearing from the words, or, in cases of ambiguity, by choosing between two or more permissible meanings. It is not within the function of the court to impose a meaning on the contract. "A policy of insurance and every clause and part thereof is the contract, and, like all contracts, should be construed so as to effectuate the real purpose and intention of the parties, giving to the language employed, when unambiguous, its ordinary and usually accepted meaning." Frontier Mortgage Corporation v. Heft, 146 Md. 1, 12, 125 A. 772, 776; American Casualty Co. v. Purcella, 163 Md. 434, 436, 163 A. 870; American Automobile Ins. Co. v. Fidelity & Casualty Co., 159 Md. 631, 636, 152 A. 523; Washington Fire Ins. Co. v. Kelly, 32 Md. 421, 435, 3 Am.Rep. 149; Stipcich v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 277 U.S. 311, 322, 48 S.Ct. 512, 72 L.Ed. 895; Northam v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. (Ala.Sup.1935) 163 So. 635. And the conclusion of this court is that the clause now examined will not, in full conformity with these principles, bear the construction which has been put upon it.

Three courts in other jurisdictions have restricted the word "homicide" in similar clauses to exclude from it killings by insane persons. Great Southern Life Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 148 Miss. 173, 114 So. 262, 56 A.L.R. 681; Day v. Interstate Life & Accident Co., 163 Tenn. 190, 42 S.W.(2d) 208; Texas Life Ins. Co. v. Plunkett (Tex.Civ.App.1934) 75 S.W.(2d) 313. In an earlier Texas case cited, Great Southern Life Ins. Co. v. Cherry (Tex.Civ.App.) 24 S.W.(2d) 512, it was agreed that the killing by a sane man, was with intent to inflict death, and no question of intent or lack of it was raised. On the authority of these cases and others, it is argued that the homicides meant to be excluded from the basis of additional indemnity can only be those which result from acts intended to cause death to the insured. And with homicides thus divided, some excluded, some not, according to the presence or absence of that intention, it is deduced that a killing in any one case cannot be excepted from the basis of the allowance unless and until it is shown that it was a killing accompanied by that specific design, that this raises a question of fact, and the burden of proof on it would be on the insurer. It would follow that a verdict for the defendant could not be directed as a matter of law.

In addition to the decisions in cases of killings by insane men, the appellee urges in support of this view that it is improbable that killings by inadvertent, innocent acts of sane men would be within the contemplation of the clause. Decisions by other courts that exceptions in accident insurance policies of death by injuries intentionally inflicted, or resulting from intentional acts, contemplate this specific intent to kill, are cited for further illustration. And for the same purpose, we are referred to decisions under like clauses that shooting or throwing a missile without intent to kill any one, or to kill the one who may happen to be killed by it, does not show the specific intent required to except the death from a victim's insurance. These cases of fatal injury without intent to kill, or to kill the actual victims, are, however, subjects of conflicting decisions, and it seems probable that the weight of authority is against the conclusion followed in the present argument. See review of cases in notes: 48 L.R.A.(N.S.) 524; 56 A.L.R. 690; 37 L.R.A.(N.S.) 172.

An intention to kill the victim is not, of course, an essential of homicide in its ordinary and usually accepted meaning. There are accidental homicides, and homicides by misadventure, or involuntary manslaughter, as they are sometimes called, in which there is no intention to kill or to harm at all. Bouv. Law Dict., Manslaughter; 4 Black. Com. 188; Embry v. Commonwealth, 236 Ky. 204, 32 S.W.(2d) 979; State v. Towers, 106 Minn. 105, 118 N.W. 361. A killing by an insane man is characterized by a like absence of will, and is for that reason not punishable. And even for criminal homicides the intention is not an essential. "An intention to kill is not necessary to the offense of homicide." Wharton, Homicide, § 87. No intent to kill the particular victims may exist in cases of death by a shooting or throwing into a crowd, or in killing one person mistaken for...