Court Opinion

ID: 9637881
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:25:06.763942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:01.534700
License: Public Domain

WOOLLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). I am constrained to dissent from the judgment of the court for reasons which I shall state very briefly.
The action is not in tort; it is on a contract. The contract is one of insurance. Like all contracts it should be construed as the parties wrote it. It provides in terms for indemnity to the insured in the event of his sustaining “bodily injuries through external, violent and accidental means, while he is riding in * * * a private automobile.” The trial court submitted to the jury an issue of fact, namely; whether the insured sustained his injuries by being thrown from the car or by voluntarily jumping out, and, construing the contract as it reads, instructed them that if they should find the latter fact their verdict must be for the defendant. The evidence was meager, a doubtful emergency, and the discovery of the insured’s body about three hundred feet back from the place where the car was stopped. The verdict for the defendant was a finding that the insured jumped. On this finding I cannot see how his injuries were sustained “through external, violent and/or accidental means while he (was) riding in” a car — the only three risks in a restricted situation insured against. Nothing of an external, violent or accidental nature happened to the insured until he left the car and assumed hazards which, as I read it, the policy does not cover. To embrace these hazards the contract of insurance must be expanded by words which the parties did not use and be given a meaning which its words do not import. In refusing to do this, the learned District Judge, I think, was right.