Wyckoff v. Mutual Life Ins. Co.

• Citation: 173 Or. 592,147 P.2d 227
• Parties: WYCKOFF <I>v.</I> MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE CO. OF NEW YORK
• Decision Date: 25 October 1943
• Court: Supreme Court of Oregon

173 Or. 592

147 P.2d 227

WYCKOFF

v. MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE CO. OF NEW YORK

Supreme Court of Oregon.

Argued at Pendleton October 25, 1943.

Reargued February 1, 1944.

Reversed March 14, 1944.

Evidence

1. There is a common-law presumption against suicide.

Evidence

2. The statutory preumption that a person is innocent of crime or wrong is broad and comprehensive enough to include a presumption against suicide.

Evidence

3. It is common knowledge that sane persons do not ordinarily kill themselves.

Suicide

4. Self-destruction ordinarily involves moral turpitude and is regarded as being wrong.

Evidence

5. Although a presumption in the strict sense of the word is not "evidence", under the statutes a "presumption" has probative or evidentiary value and stands in lieu of evidence and does not necessarily disappear when evidence is offered in opposition thereto, but only disappears when the facts upon which it is based have been overcome by evidence to the contrary.

Trial

6. In action to recover double indemnity under a life policy where issue was whether insured's death was caused by accident or by suicide, refusal to instruct that there is a legal presumption against suicide and that death is presumed to have been caused by accidental means rather than by suicide, was reversible error.

Trial

7. In action to recover double indemnity under life policy, where issue was whether insured's death was caused by accident or by suicide, refusal to give instruction that the presumption against suicide can be overcome by circumstantial evidence only if of such quality and weight as to negative every reasonable inference of death by accident, was not error.

Trial

8. In action on life policy where issue is whether insured's death was caused by accident or by suicide, it is proper to instruct the jury in simple language that the disputable presumption against suicide could be overcome by evidence satisfying their minds to the contrary, and that if the presumption was not thus overcome the jury should find that death was the result of an accident.

Constitutional law

9. Statutes declaring certain facts to be prima facie or presumptive evidence of other facts do not, where there is some rational connection between the facts proved and the ultimate facts presumed, deny "equal protection of the laws", or violate constitutional guaranties of "due process of law."

BRAND, HAY, and ROSSMAN, JJ., dissenting.

                  See 29 Am. Jur. 1085
                  31 C.J.S., Evidence, § 135
                

Before BAILEY, Chief Justice, and BELT, ROSSMAN, KELLY, LUSK, BRAND and HAY, Associate Justices.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Malheur County.

ROBERT M. DUNCAN, Judge.

Action by Bess S. Wyckoff against the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York to recover double indemnity under a life policy. The jury, by its verdict, found that insured had committed suicide, and from the judgment denying recovery of double liability, plaintiff appeals.

REVERSED.

George Donart, of Weiser, Idaho (Biggs & Yturri, of Ontario, on the briefs), for appellant.

Robert S. Miller and Borden Wood, both of Portland (McCamant, King & Wood, of Portland, on the brief), for respondent.

BELT, J.

The beneficiary brought this action to recover under the double indemnity provision of a life insurance policy issued by the defendant company, alleging that the insured came to his death from "bodily injury effected solely through external, violent, and accidental means", to-wit, by being drowned in the Snake river. The defendant, in its answer, admitted that the insured was drowned in the Snake river but denied that death was accidental and alleged affirmatively that "insured died by reason of self destruction". The issue was clear cut. Was insured drowned as a result of an accident or was his death suicidal? There was no eye witness to this tragedy. The case was based purely upon circumstantial evidence. The jury, by its verdict, found that the insured had committed suicide and hence no double liability was payable under the policy.

The appeal is based solely upon the refusal of the court to give the following requested instructions:

1.

"You are instructed that there is a legal presumption against suicide and when the body of a person is found under circumstances pointing to a sudden death from injury or drowning, such death is presumed to have been caused by accidental means rather than by the intentional act of the person himself."

2.

"You are instructed that in an action on an accident policy, if it is shown by the evidence that the death must have been accidental or suicidal, the presumption against suicide can be overcome by circumstantial evidence only if it is of such quality and weight as to negative every reasonable inference of death by accident."

The first requested instruction presents the question as to whether it was reversible error for the court to refuse to tell the jury that there is a legal presumption against suicide. The second request pertains to the quantum of evidence necessary to overcome a presumption against suicide.

1. That there is a presumption of law against suicide is well settled in this jurisdiction and elsewhere: Fink v. Prudential Insurance Co., 162 Or. 37, 90 P. (2d) 762; Cox v. Royal Tribe, 42 Or. 365, 71 P. 73, 60 L.R.A. 620, 95 Am. St. Rep. 752. Also see exhaustive note in 103 A.L.R. 185 and Couch's Cyc. of Insurance Law (Vol. 8) § 2230. As said in 29 Am. Jur. 1085:

"* * * where it is doubtful from the evidence whether death was caused by an accident or by suicide, a presumption arises that an accident, and not suicide, was the cause of death", citing numerous authorities in support of the text.

2. Aside from such common law presumption, it is believed that the disputable statutory presumption (Subd. 1, § 2-407 O.C.L.A.) "That a person is innocent of crime or wrong" is broad and comprehensive enough to include a presumption against suicide. Based upon an identical statute, the Supreme Court of California, in Wilkinson v. Standard Accident Ins. Co., 180 Cal. 252, 180 P. 607, referring to the presumption against suicide, said:

"This presumption necessarily and logically follows from the statutory presumption `That a person is innocent of crime or wrong.'" (Code Civ. Proc. § 1963, subd. 1.)

3, 4. It is common knowledge that sane persons do not ordinarily kill themselves. Human experience teaches that there is a strong love of life and fear of death inherent in mankind. It is upon this experienced course of human conduct that the legal presumption against suicide is based. Under the early common law, suicide was punished as a felony. Blackstone describes how the suicide was given an ignominious burial along the highway with a stake driven through his body. We do not now regard suicide with such severity but, nevertheless, self destruction ordinarily involves moral turpitude and is undoubtedly regarded as being wrong. True, such presumption is not specifically enumerated in the statute as a disputable presumption. Neither is fraud but will it be contended that there is no presumption of law against it? The various disputable statutory presumptions — some of which are much stronger than others — are based upon human experience and have, by legislative enactment, crystallized into rules of law.

Whether a presumption of law has evidentiary value is a question upon which text writers, legal commentators, and professors of the law — to say nothing about judges — have evinced much learning and erudition. The "Battle of Presumptions" commenced when that eminent legal scholar, Professor Thayer, of Yale University, in his "Preliminary Treatise on the Law of Evidence" strongly criticized the United States Supreme Court in Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 15 S.Ct. 394, 39 L.Ed. 481, for reversing a judgment of conviction because the trial court refused to instruct the jury that a presumption of innocence exists as evidence in favor of a person accused of crime. The court quoted from 1 Greenleaf on Evidence, § 34, that, "This legal presumption of innocence is to be regarded by the jury, in every case, as a matter of evidence to the benefit of which the party is entitled." Then came another eminent scholar, Professor Wigmore, — to whom the torch had been thrown — and he became the leading exponent of the theory that a presumption of law has no evidentiary value and that, after it has carried the case past the court to the jury, the presumption disappears from the case and can not be weighed in the scales with the evidence. According to this theory, a presumption of law has only procedural consequences and when it has operated as such it is functus officio. In other words, when evidence is introduced to rebut the presumption — however weak the evidence may be — the presumption is overcome and destroyed. Some text writers, law professors, and judges who have espoused the Wigmore doctrine have vied with one another in an effort to show how flimsy and unsubstantial a presumption of law really is. This "phantom of the law" has been likened to "bats flitting about in the twilight and then disappearing in the sunshine of actual facts," and to a house of cards that topples over when rebutted by evidence. It remained for Professor Bohlen to head the class when he said a presumption of law was like Maeterlinck's male bee which, after functioning, disappeared.

However, the statute (§ 2-401 O.C.L.A.) in plain and explicit language declares that a presumption is indirect evidence and, under § 2-403 O.C.L.A. defines it as a deduction which the law expressly directs to be made from particular facts. Section 2-405 O.C.L.A. provides that a presumption may be "overcome" by other evidence, and § 2-1001 O.C.L.A. provides that the jury "are the judges of the effect or value of evidence * * *" but "that they are not bound to find in conformity with the declarations of any number of witnesses which do not produce conviction in their minds, against a less number, or against a...