Case ID: ny_235/html/0514-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Frederick W. Vanderbilt et al., as Executors of Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Deceased, Appellant, v. The Travelers Insurance Company, Respondent.
    
      Insurance —■ contract of accident insurance — exception where death results from “war” — where testator was drowned as result of torpedoing of vessel on which he was a passenger during state of war no recovery may he had on policy.
    
    
      Vanderbilt v. Travelers Ins. Co., 202 App. Div. 738, affirmed.
    (Argued January 11, 1923;
    decided January 30, 1923.)
    Appeal from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered May 9, 1922, affirming a judgment in favor of defendant entered upon a dismissal of the complaint by the court at a Trial Term without a jury. The action was to recover upon a policy of accident insurance issued to plaintiffs’ testator. It contained a clause providing that the insurance would not cover injury or death resulting “ directly or indirectly, wholly or partly from * * * war.” The testator while a passenger on the British steamship Lusitania bound from New York to Liverpool lost his fife as the result of the torpedoing and sinking of said vessel by a German submarine, a state of war existing at the time between the British and German governments.
    
      Roy C. Gasser and William H. Hayes for appellants.
    
      William J. Moran for respondent.
   Judgment affirmed, with costs; no opinion.

Concur: His cock, Ch. J., Hogan, Cabdozo, Pound and McLaughlin, JJ. Dissenting: Crane and Andrews, JJ., on ground that the word “war” in the exception of the policy because of its association, means war in which the insured participates as a belligerent.