Whigham v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co.

• Citation: 22 A.2d 704,343 Pa. 149
• Decision Date: 24 November 1941
• Docket Number: 144
• Parties: Whigham v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

22 A.2d 704

343 Pa. 149

Whigham v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Appellant

No. 144

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

November 24, 1941

Argued October 1, 1941.

Appeal, No. 144, March T., 1941, from judgment of C.P Allegheny Co., Oct. T., 1938, No. 2058, in case of Anna M Whigham v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Judgment, as modified, affirmed.

Assumpsit on policy of life insurance. Before McNAUGHER, J.

Verdict and judgment for plaintiff. Defendant appealed.

The judgment is reduced to $1800 and as modified is affirmed.

D. C Jennings, with him Wallace E. Edgecombe, for appellant.

Thomas Lewis Jones, for appellee.

Before SCHAFFER, C.J.; MAXEY, DREW, LINN, PATTERSON and PARKER, JJ.

OPINION

MR. MAXEY, JUSTICE:

This is an appeal from the refusal of the court below to grant a new trial after a verdict for the plaintiff in the sum of $3,000 plus $600 interest in an action of assumpsit on a policy of life insurance. On January 1, 1936, the defendant delivered a life insurance policy to John E. Whigham, providing that in consideration of the payment of the monthly premium of $6.18 the company would pay $1,500 to the insured's wife as beneficiary upon receipt of due proof of the death of the insured and further by "supplemental contract" attached to the policy, in consideration of the payment of an additional premium of 24 cents a month the company agreed to pay to the beneficiary an additional $1500 "upon receipt of due proof of the death of the insured as the result, directly and independently of all other causes, of bodily injury sustained solely through external, violent and accidental means" and subject to certain other provisions not material to the issue now before us.

The "supplementary contract" also contained the following clause: "The insurance under this supplementary contract shall be suspended while the insured is insane, . . ." The insured died on November 20, 1937, when the policy and supplementary contract were in full force and all premiums had been duly paid. The beneficiary claims that the insured's death was caused by external, violent and accidental means; the company claims that it was due to suicide.

On November 15, 1937, the insured was taken to "the mental department" of St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh. His case was diagnosed as one of involutional melancholia. For two days he was confined to his bed with anklet and belt attached so that he could not leave it but on the third day he was permitted to move about. On November 18 he was seen by one of the hospital attendants apparently going to the lavatory. A few minutes later, this attendant found him lying upon the floor of the lavatory in an unconscious condition. He was removed to his room and in a few minutes recovered consciousness. X-ray pictures revealed his fractured skull. An operation was performed but the insured died on November 20, 1937. The coroner's physician, Dr. McMeans, testified to the finding of the autopsy performed by him, including a fractured sternum and superficial abrasions of the forehead and lower lip. He testified that the injuries were the result of multiple trauma, that they could have been caused by a fall, but that in his opinion they were not so caused. Dr. McMeans detailed the injuries as follows: "In the middle of the forehead there was a transverse abrasion, superficial in character, measuring one inch by one-quarter of an inch. The abrasion was just above the area between the eyebrows, above the frontal eminence. There were three abrasions between the parietal eminences. Those are the bony prominences on either side of the head, and they ran in anterior-posterior position, that is, from the fore backward. . . . There was a vertical incision three-quarters of an inch in front of the right ear. . . . In the middle of the right lower lip, at the vermilion border, there was a superficial wound measuring one-fourth of an inch in diameter." He found a hemorrhage on the right side of the brain between the covering of the skull and the bone itself in the region of the fracture that he found on that part of the skull, and a fracture of the upper part of the breast bone between the first and second ribs. He declared that "death was due to shock and hemorrhage following a fracture at the base of the skull and right temporal bone, with lacerations and contusion of the left temporal lobe of the brain, and there was a bilateral lobar pneumonia in the lower lobes of both lungs." He said: "I think it would take a pretty considerable force or injury to cause the fracture of the skull of the type that I have described. . . . He must have had a blow." When asked whether the condition described could have been caused by a fall, he answered: "I would be willing to say it could be caused by a fall, as I did, but the man had multiple injuries. . . . I can't say that it was a single cause. . . . Two separate forces may have come into effect as the result of the fall, or there may have been a separate force applied to the breast bone which caused him to fall and fracture his skull, because my experience is that an individual must have a fracture of his breast bone by direct force applied either in a fall or a blow directly to the breast bone. Such may have been the case here. There are those possibilities, but I feel that he fell and fractured his skull after the fracture of the breast bone had occurred. . . . I don't think he could have had a fracture of the breast bone by contact with the floor. I feel that he must have fallen across something. There was a bath tub in this room, as I understand." On being informed there was no bath tub in the room, the witness said: "There were objects that he could have fallen on and then fallen to the floor and fractured his skull." The witness was asked on cross-examination: "The same thing could have happened if he had dived or run into the wall and hit his breast bone on the washstand, for instance, as he did so?" He answered: "I don't know how he could. If he ran up against a flat wall, I can't conceive how he would fracture his breast bone then, any more than he would by a fall on the floor." He was asked: "Suppose he climbed up and dived and came down and struck his breast bone on the corner of a washstand on the way down, and then he hit his head on the floor. It could have occurred that way, couldn't it?" He answered: "I don't think the man could have sustained a fracture of the skull and a fracture of the breast bone in a dive from a place such as you have indicated; . . . he also had a wound on the lower right lip...