Case Name: Mary Jane Darrows, Resp't, v. Family Fund Society, App'lt
Court: New York Supreme Court, General Term
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1886-12
Citations: 3 N.Y. St. Rep. 745
Docket Number: 
Parties: Mary Jane Darrows, Resp’t, v. Family Fund Society, App’lt.
Judges: 
Reporter: New York State Reporter
Volume: 3
Pages: 745–750

Head Matter:
Mary Jane Darrows, Resp’t, v. Family Fund Society, App’lt.
(Supreme Court, General Term, Third Department,
Filed December 1886.)
1. Insurance (life)—Action on policy—Suicide not a. violation of the
CRIMINAL LAW—PENAL CODE, § 173.
The defendant is a corporation doing the business of life insurance on the assessment plan. This action is brought on a policy of insurance by which the defendant within sixty days after evidence of the death of D was to pay the plaintiff §5,000 from "the death fund of the society at the time of said death. Provision was also made that when the death fund should be insufficient a call should be made on members, etc. The policy further provided that it should he void if the member named therein “shall die * * * in violation of, or attempt to violate any criminal law of any state or country in which the member herein may be.” D, the member named in the policy, committed suicide. Held, that the deceased did not die in violation of or attempt to violate .any criminal law of the state, although the attempt to commit suicide is made a crime, Penal Code, 173 yet if successful it is suicide and no crime. Leabned, P. J., dissenting.
S. Same—When insufficiency of death fund no defense.
Held, that if there was money in the death fund-at the time of D’s death, from which plaintiff’s claim could he payable, the insufficiency of the death fund would be no defense to an action on the claim, although there had been a diversion of the funds to other objects.
Pond, French & Brackett, for resp’ts; George Wilcox, for appTt.

Opinion:
Landón, J.
The question is whether the insured died "in violation of, or attempt to violate, any criminal law the United States, or of any state or country in which the member may be." I think that suicide, or the successful attempt to commit it, is not made a crime by our Penal Code.
"A crime is an act or omission forbidden by law and punishable by," etc. Section 3. "Although suicide is deemed a grave public wrong, yet from the impossibility of reaching the successful perpetrator, no forfeiture is imposed." Section 173.
Attempting suicide is made a crime. Section 178. It is thus defined: "A person who, with intent to take his own life, commits upon himself any act dangerous to human life, or which if committed upon or towards another person and followed by death as a consequence, would render the perpetrator chargeable with homicide, is guilty of attempting suicide. Section 174.
It seems to follow that the attempt to commit suicide, if successful, is suicide, and no crime, but only "a grave public wrong," but if unsuccessful is a crime.
Section 685 providing that "A person may be convicted of an attempt to commit a crime, although it appears on the trial that the crime was consummated, unless the court, in its discretion, discharges the jury and directs the defendant to be tried for the crime itself," can from the nature of the case have no application to an attempt to commit suicide. The attempt is the crime itself. To bring it within the section there should be an attempt to commit suicide. If there is an attempt to commit suicide, the success of the attempt does not consummate the crime, but avoids it. How could the jury be discharged and the defendant be tried for the crime itself? What crime? The section must be limited to the cases to which it can apply.
The objection that this action being at law could not be maintained, because there was not sufficient proof of money in the death fund of the defendant, is satisfactorily answered in the opinion of the presiding justice.
I advise an affirmance of the judgment and order.
Bockes, J., concurs; Learned, P. J., dissents.