Court Opinion

ID: 9638435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:43:54.408542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:06.502316
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
After the foregoing opinion was rendered, a petition for rehearing was filed on behalf of the beneficiary named in the policy on the ground that search by her counsel subsequent to the argument in this court had disclosed the decision of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Glover, 165 Va. 283, 182 S.E. 221. Since that decision throws light on the question at issue in the pending case, a rehearing was granted.
The policy in the cited case covered loss or liability resulting from bodily injuries effected exclusively by external, violent and accidental means; and the insured died from septicaemia caused by an infection carried into the blood stream when he picked a pimple or boil inside his nose with a knife or needle. The court held that the death of the insured was effected by accidental means within the coverage clause of the policy. The decision was based upon the idea that the word “accidental” in the policy, was use'd in the ordinary and popular sense as meaning “happening by chance or not according to the usual course of things”; and since septicaemia was not- the probable consequence of the insured’s act, recovery under the policy was justified.
Notwithstanding this decision, the appellant Insurance Company insists that the distinction between accidental means and accidental result, recognized and applied by the Supreme Court in Landress v. Phoenix Ins. Co., 291 U.S. 491, 54 S.St. 461, 78 L.Ed. 934, 90 A.L.R. 1382, should always be borne in mind, and when this is done there is no inconsistency between our opinion in the instant case and the holding of the Virginia court in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Glover, supra. In the pending case, it is said, the 'only unexpected and unlooked for circumstance was the result, that is, the sudden death of the insured following the transfusion, whereas in the Glover Case the means whereby the injury and death of the insured was produced may be fairly regarded as accidental because death following the totally unintended and unexpected introduction of a germ into the body of the insured.
*51It is not entirely clear that the distinction is a valid one, because the insured in the Glover Case voluntarily exposed himself to the risk of infection involved in picking the boil with a sharp instrument. But even if the means thus employed may be correctly described as accidental, it does not follow that we should adhere to the opinion on file. There are two lines of thought on the subject under discussion. Under one, exemplified by the prevailing opinion of Mr. Justice Stone in Landress v. Phoenix Ins. Co., supra, relating to a case of sunstroke suffered by the insured when playing golf under normal conditions, it is held not enough to establish liability under a policy like that now before us that the injury was accidental within the understanding of the average man, in that the result, as distinguished from the means, was something unforeseen or extraordinary. Under the other theory, exemplified by the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Cardozo in Landress v. Phoenix Ins. Co., supra, and by the opinion of Judge Parker of this court in Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Dodge, 4 Cir., 11 F.2d 486, 59 A.L.R. 1290, it is held that a result which is not the nuural or probable consequence of the means which produced it, and which the actor did not intend to produce, is produced by accidental means.
The crucial inquiry at this time is to ascertain which theory has found favor in the eyes of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. It seems clear to us from its opinion in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Glover, supra, that the court has adopted the latter theory. It quotes at length from the decision of Mr. Justice Cardozo, while a member of the Court of Appeals of New York, in Lewis v. Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp., 224 N.Y. 18, 120 N.E. 56, 7 A.L.R. 1129, in which the Justice announced the same view subsequently expressed in his dissenting opinion in the Landress Case; namely, that in fixing the meaning of the terms of a contract of accident insurance, the interpretation must be that of the average man who would say that a death has been caused by accidental means, when the deceased died in such a way that, his death is spoken of as an accident; and that the distinction between the accidental results and accidental means cannot survive, if we apply the rule that ambiguities and uncertainties in a policy of insurance must be resolved against the company.
In view of the more recent expression from the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, its approval in Newsoms v. Commercial Casualty Ins. Co., 147 Va. 471, 137 S.E. 456, 52 A.L.R. 363, of our opinion in Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Dodge, supra, also takes on a new significance. In the case last named the insured died as the result of an administration of novacaine preliminary to an operation for the removal of his tonsils; so that, as in the pending case, an extraordinary and unusual peculiarity of the insured led to his death upon the performance of a voluntary act which, in the usual and natural course of things, would not have brought about a fatal result.
Having reached this conclusion as to the law of Virginia, it becomes our duty to withdraw the opinion on file and to affirm the judgment of the District Court.
Affirmed.