Court Opinion

ID: 9710698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:15:26.217687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:59.027007
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
Achor, J.
The insurance policy here involved provided for payment in event “of due proof that the death of the insured . . . has resulted in direct consequence of bodily injuries effected solely and independently of *617all other causes through external, violent and accidental means.”
I concur in the majority opinion that the evidence before us supports the fact of death by violent and accidental means.. The authorities • cited clearly support this conclusion. United States Casualty Co. v. Griffis (1916), 186 Ind. 126, 114 N. E. 83, 29 Am. Jur., Insurance, §991, p. 743.
However, in my opinion the evidence does not support the fact of injury and death through external means. This, by the explicit terms of the insurance contract, is made the first condition to liability.
Numerous cases are cited which, it is urged, support the conclusion that the decisive test of ability is whether the proximate cause of the death is the mechanical action of food. United States Casualty Co. v. Griffis, supra; Gohlke v. Hawkeye Commercial Men’s Assn. (1924), 198 Ia. 144, 197 N. E. 1004; Jenkins v. Hawkeye Commercial Men’s Assn. (1910), 147 Ia. 113, 124 N. W. 199; American Accident Company v. Reigart (1893), 94 Ky. 547, 23 S. W. 191. In my opinion the cases do not support a precedent as above asserted. An examination of these cases discloses that they all do affirm the principle that although the injury may be internal, the means which caused the injury must be external. In each of the above cited cases, the means of injury (the substance consumed, whether mushrooms, dry Salhepatica or a fish bone) was either, (1) in its external form or content, such that it was unnatural or dangerous for human consumption and, when consumed, was the proximate cause of the injury; United States Casualty Co. v. Griffis, supra, and cases cited, or (2) the means of injury was the direct and initial process of eating and attempting to swallow food (beefsteak). American Accident Company v. Reigart, supra.
*618Without approving the decision of the Kentucky case above, we do observe that the facts in that case and the case before us are clearly distinguishable. In the Kentucky case, the injury occurred while the food was in the process of entering into the body and, therefore, it might be rationalized that the injury was external, whereas, in this case, injury occurred while the food was being regurgitated from the inside of the body to the outside, and there was no evidence that the nature of the substance as it was consumed was the proximate cause of the regurgitation. I am unable to see how a conclusion that the injury in the former case can be considered as precedent that injury in the latter was also external.
Note. — Reported in 117 N. E. 2d 376.