Court Opinion

ID: 8032440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 03:17:00.130746+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:37:00.970428
License: Public Domain

Elansrurg, J.,
dissenting.
It seems to me there can be no recovery in any event in this case, for the reason that the policy provides that there shall be no liability unless the injury shall, from the date of the accident, cause the insured to be totally and continuously unable to transact all business duties. The fact here was that for a period of* two weeks after the injury the insured was about his business as usual. It was not the original injury, standing alone, which produced and brought about the death of the insured. It was the cancer resulting from, and no doubt brought on by, the original injury.
As to the question of the proximate cause of death, the injury may be considered to have been that proximate cause, since, through that injury and the processes of nature following it, death resulted; but, in order to de*35termine whether or not that resulting death, even though it may be held to have been proximately caused by ’the original injury, is covered by the policy, we must look alone to the terms and limitations contained in the policy itself.
It is quite clear that the insured was not totally and continuously, from the date of the accident, disabled. From all outward manifestations, the cancer did not have its inception or begin its growth for two weeks, or even a longer period, after the accident had been sustained. It is entirely legitimate that the company should limit its liability, in case of death, to those occasions where death results within a given period from the date of accident, such as a 90-day period, or where death results from an accident which continuously and totally disables the insured. Such provisions are reasonable. Where liability is confined to death resulting from such accidental injuries, some proof is furnished, by the fact of continuous and total disability immediately following and continuing from the date of the accident, that the accident was, itself, the cause of death, ■ and that death was not due to some new and later intervening or contributing cause. The .company may desire to write a policy to cover those deaths only which in such manner appear to be more directly connected with the accident, and this it is entirely free to do.
It seems to me, under this provision alone, and more especially when considered in the light of the clause pi*oviding that the company should not be liable where death was contributed to by disease, that the loss in this case is not covered, and that the beneficiary is not entitled to a judgment.