Court Opinion

ID: 9644167
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:49:19.942331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:09.321264
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The rule announced by the majority that “the presumption against suicide was overcome if the preponderance of the evidence was consistent with the theory of suicide and at the same time was inconsistent with any reasonable-hypothesis of death by accident” is a good one to give in charge to a jury but not a good one on which to -exclude the jury from their constitutional function of weighing the evidence and the inferences from circumstances. The question here is whether the gun was discharged accidentally or intentionally, and the evidence is wholly circumstantial. There is, I think, no such certainty of suicide as to exclude the reasonable possibility of accident. The gun was evidently vertical when it fired, was resting on the floor at Love’s left side, and the muzzle was opposite his shoulder, the load carrying away the left side of his skull. The wound was not through the roof of the mouth, nor directly into the temple or forehead, as an intentional one would likely be, but it began at the eheek bone and went almost straight up. The time and place do not suggest suicide. In early morn-, ing, after a good night’s sleep, Love was at his work, had just transacted business with one overseer and had sent for another. The gun was not procured for the deed, but stood customarily in the vault with other weapons, some of them loaded and seemingly kept there for emergency use. The gun used was an old one without rebounding lock and to that extent dangerous, but the only one in which Love was shown to have had any personal interest, for it was pledged to him to secure a loan. He might very reasonably have taken it up to examine it or to set it aside. His general circumstances were not such as to make it probable that he would kill himself. He was not desperate, but hopeful. He had lost his job, but only because he had failed to post to his account $218 of goods purchased at the company’s store, of which there was, as he knew, a full record in the duplicate tickets kept at the store. There could hardly have been crime in the failure, and certainly no prosecution was threatened. He had not yet even tried to get other work. He had a plantation not paid for but rented for $3,500 per year for three years»to come. He owned a store rented for $30 per month, had cows whose milk and butter netted him $25 or $30 per month, had Plough Chemical Company stock which was paying $300 per year and had $1,500 in Investors’ Syndicate and a $1,200 mortgage on a place which he told his wife he had arranged to occupy if they had to leave their home. Here was a cash income of more than $1,000 per year outside of the farm rents. In good health and domestically happy, he had no great cause for depression and had shown none. True his life was insured, and by killing himself he could give his family money on his older policies; but $31,000, the greater part of his insurance, was not a year old and would be nullified thereby. He could have eased his financial strain by dropping this new insurance with the loss of only one premium; or, if he was planning to enrich his family dishonestly, he could probably from his other means have carried it for another year and rendered it ineontestible. There has been much discussion of the pencil found in Love’s left hand, and the stick with the nails in it in his right hand, and the freshly splintered gunstoek. The theory of suicide uses the *833stick to push the gun trigger, but it makes no explanation of the pencil and the splintering’ except to say that the pencil may have been meaningless and the splintering unconnected with the death. The theory of accident replies that the stick with the nails in it may •have been picked up from the floor lest it be stepped on; the gun may have been innocently raised by the muzzle with the left hand having the pencil also in it and, the pencil tending to make the grasp insecure, may have fallen vertically 12 inches or more to the floor when, if loaded, experiment, proved that it would fire although not cocked, and could thus readily have made the wound that was made. A witness qualifying as expert on comparing the cap of the fatal shell with one fired with the gun at full cock gave it as his opinion that the former had not been fired at full cock. The gun stock is so shaped that in dropping vertically the toe strikes first. The splinter that was knocked off from the toe was evidently knocked off at some time in that wa.y. The testimony is uncontradicted that the break showed bright and fresh. No one thought to look for the splinter until Monday morning, after the death on Saturday. It was not found because the vault had meanwhile been cleaned out and the sweepings burned. No other occasion for the stock to get freshly broken is shown, and it is not irrational to conclude that it had been dropped vertically by Love, the only man shown to have recently had his hands on it.
The burden of explaining away circumstances which indicate accident was on the insurance company. Upon proof of a death by external violence without more, accident and not suicide will he presumed. Travelers’ Insurance Co. v. McConkey, 127 U. S. 661, 8 S. Ct. 1360, 32 L. Ed. 308; Preferred Accident Ins. Co. v. Fielding, 35 Colo. 19, 83 P. 1013, 9 Ann. Cas. 916; Meadows v. Pac. Mut. Life Ins. Co., 129 Mo. 76, 31 S. W. 578, 50 Am. St. Rep. 427, and the host of eases cited in the notes to each. The preference for accident rather than suicide as the explanation for a violent death which might be due to either is not an artificial rule of law made to prescribe an order of proof as some presumptions are, disappearing so soon as the proof is in. It is an inference of truth drawn, from the common knowledge that men ordinarily do not destroy but strive by all means to preserve their own lives. It is part of the probability of the situation, and continues while opposing evidence is weighed and may be weighed against it, hut yields to reasonable proof whether positive or circumstantial to Che contrary. In Bohaker v. Travelers’ Ins. Co., 215 Mass. 32, 102 N. E. 342, 344, 46 L. R. A. (N. S.) 543, Chief Justice Rugg says: “It [suicide] cannot be assumed without clear proof. The presumption is that one does not commit suicide. Such a presumption, being one of fact, stands until overthrown by evidence.” The original improbability of suicide is rebutted by proof that it did happen. Davis v. Reliance Life Ins. Co. (C. C. A.) 12 F.(2d) 248. In Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Wise, 61 F.(2d) 481, we held that a letter clearly expressing a present intention of suicide followed immediately by death in a fashion likely to have been voluntary might rebut it. In Burkett v. New York Life Ins. Co., 56 F.(2d) 105, and in New York Life Ins. Co. v. Bradshaw, 2 F.(2d) 457, we held that a circumstance established by uncontroverted evidence inconsistent with accident would prevent a finding of accident. Of course, if all the circumstances indicate suicide, and support no reasonable theory of accident, a verdict of suicide is demanded. Ætna Life Ins. Co. v. Tooley (C. C. A.) 36 F.(2d) 243. In every case the question at last is, remembering the general improbability of suicide, what is the real truth under all the facts proved ?
In this case the evidence being wholly circumstantial, and the inferences from it not conclusive, I think the ease was one for the jury. In Home Benefit Association v. Sargent, 142 U. S. 691, the circumstances detailed on page 698, 12 S. Ct. 332, 35 L. Ed. 1160, were stronger to show suicide than those here, but they were held to make a jury case on a possible theory of mental disease. So in Pythias Knights v. Beck, 183 U. S. 49, 21 S. Ct. 532, 45 L. Ed. 741, the circumstances were thought too inconclusive to authorize a directed verdict of suicide, though deceased’s wife had quit him, and he had rented the gun, was drinking and a policeman was seeking to arrest him. The court said, pages 53 and 54 of 181 U. S., 21 S. Ct. 532, 533: “Whether the deceased committed suicide was a question of fact, and a jury is the proper trier of such questions. * * * The hack driver heard him go into the closet, and after a minute or so heard him step outside and immediately the} gun was discharged, and on examination ho was found with the upper part of his head shot off. It was so dark that no one saw the circumstances of the shooting. Whether it was accidental or intentional is a matter of surmise. * * * Under those circumstances it is impossible to say that beyond dispute he committed suicide. The discharge of the gun may as well have happened from the careless conduct of a drunken man as from an *834intentional act.” A theory that a man found dead beneath the window of his office had sat down in it to get some air, or had fainted and fallen out, was thought reasonable enough to go to the jury along with the presumption against suicide, though he had been greatly worried and sleepless and fell with arms extended as if diving. U. S. F. & G. Co. v. Blum (C. C. A.) 270 F. 946. Our case of National Union v. Fitzpatrick, 133 F. 694, was a stronger case for suicide than this, but was held for the jury. See, also, Fidelity & Casualty Co. v. Love (C. C. A.) 111 F. 773, and Standard Life Ins. Co. v. Thornton (C. C. A.) 100 F. 582, 49 L. R. A. 116. It was error to direct a verdict of suicide.