CIVIL JURISPRUDENCE.
The civil branch of the jurisprudence of our subject is more complex
than the criminal. Life assurance companies naturally object to have to
pay sums of money for suicidal deaths, when these are proved to have
occurred in persons who have never shown any mental derangement, and
who may have had reasons for providing a considerable sum of money for
their families, even at the expense of forfeiting their own further
concern in this world. Such fraudulent suicides have taken place, just
as some men have not hesitated to risk being judicially executed for
murder, committed to obtain sums of money and other valuables.
Our English Judges have, unfortunately, not been unanimous in their
decisions respecting the forfeiture of insurances by voluntary death;
and the assurance companies have further complicated the matter by
the insertion of peculiar clauses in their policies, and by using
alternative phrases, meaning suicide, which the law courts have held to
infer different notions.
It has always been the custom to insert in policies of life assurance
the proviso that the death of the assured by suicide should render the
policy void. This was understood to mean that felo-de-se voided the
policy.
But it became the constant practice of Coroner’s juries to find that
persons who had been proved to have destroyed themselves were suffering
from “temporary insanity”: they thus avoided a verdict of felo-de-se;
hence arose the necessity of an understanding whether or not “Suicide
whilst insane” did or did not vitiate a policy. In equity, of course,
such a death should not do so, because the death occurs without the
voluntary determination of a healthy mind, and no one can contract
himself out of the possibility of some day losing his reason.
The difficulty might never have arisen, but for this unfortunate
straining of the word insanity to cover all cases of suicide.
On the Continent, in many States, this injudicious mode of regarding
suicides does not exist; when madmen kill themselves, their madness is
registered; and when persons whom no one has ever noticed to be unable
to manage their affairs, and whose mental state has not been disturbed,
until they have preferred death to life, on account of some loss or
annoyance, their voluntary deaths are registered as such. In those
states unseemly squabbles between assurance companies and executors are
quite rare.
To dispute and refuse payment, however, was found by the companies not
altogether a profitable business, because such cases gave rise to much
discussion and more misrepresentation, and the litigating company was
apt to be avoided by persons about to choose a company to insure with.
Several cases which appeared to be attempts at fraud have been the
subject of investigation in courts of law. See reports of the suits of
Borrodaile _v._ Hunter, 1841; Schwabe _v._ Clift, 1845; Isett _v._ The
American Insurance Company; and The St. Louis Insurance Company _v._
Graves.
In the first case, a clergyman jumped off Vauxhall Bridge into the
Thames and was drowned; in his case the policy stated that it should
be avoided if the assured should “die by his own hands.” At the trial,
Erskine, J., told the jury the policy must be void if the deceased
jumped into the water, intending to kill himself, and knowing that
this action would kill him; he also left it to them to say whether
the deceased could, at the time of his death, distinguish right from
wrong. The jury became confused, for they found that the deceased threw
himself off with _intent_ to destroy himself, and also that he was
not capable of deciding right from wrong. The verdict was entered for
the defendants, that is, that deceased was felo-de-se. On Appeal, the
case was argued before four judges in 1843; they, however, differed in
opinion; three judges held that it was felo-de-se, and one that the
assured was temporarily insane, and that his death was due to an insane
uncontrollable impulse.
This matter in dispute arose again in 1845 in the case of Schwabe
_v._ Clift; the deceased drank sulphuric acid, and died, when clearly
insane. The jury returned a verdict of death during insanity, intending
thereby to say that the policy should not be void. In this policy
the term used was “suicide,” and the judge, Cresswell, held that
this word meant felo-de-se. On appeal, this judgment was reversed,
the judges again differing; the majority held that the clause meant
“intentionally killing himself,” whether in a reasonable state of mind
or not; the minority were of opinion that disease of the senses, or
the reason, leading to suicide, was not intentional death, nor such as
ought to cause a forfeiture.
This decision of the judges was of great importance, and led the
companies to alter the wording of their policies, for under the old
system any one who in an attack of delirium during a fever, or after an
accident, should jump out of a window and kill himself, would thereby
forfeit his policy; the public could not put up with this dictum, which
if law, is not the equity of the case.
Some companies inserted clauses which provided for compromises of such
claims; others definitely stated that any voluntary death should avoid
a policy, but reserved to themselves the right to return a part of the
policy value, calculated up to the day of death.
At the present time, however, policies, which in theory are avoided by
suicide, are almost always practically paid by the companies, in full,
or nearly so, unless there be any reason to suspect the existence of a
fraudulent intention on the part of the assured.
It may be broadly stated that now, in 1885, the companies have almost
all agreed to make assigned policies indisputable.
The following axioms will be found of great value:─
When the assured, being himself beneficially interested in the
assurance, dies a felo-de-se, public policy requires that the contract
be rendered void. And the same holds good of those who claim under
the assured, should he have assigned it, whether for valuable
consideration or not. Bunyon, p. 74.
But when the assured is but the nominee of the assurer, and has no
beneficial interest in the insurance, neither equity nor public policy
require the insurance to be avoided; still, this point has not been
judicially fixed. Pope, p. 351.
When the suicide is insane, the policy is not avoided, unless by
special condition of the policy. See Horn _v._ Anglo-Australian Ass.
Co.
A condition may be inserted that if the policy be assigned to a third
person, and in favour of that assignee or those claiming under him,
such shall not be void; and the Courts have decided that the insuring
company may be the assignee. See White _v._ Brit. Emp. Ass. Co. 7
L. R. Equity, 394.
If a condition were inserted that the policy should not lapse, even if
the assured killed himself when of sound mind, and when beneficially
interested, it would be void in law from public policy.
A condition supporting the insurance, in the event of suicide during
insanity, whether the assured were beneficially interested or not,
would not be void in law.
A condition, avoiding the policy in case the assured should “commit
suicide,” “die by his own hand,” or “perish by his own hand,”
includes all cases of voluntary death, whether the person be sane or
insane, and whether beneficially interested or not so. See Borrodaile
_v._ Hunter; Clift _v._ Schwabe; Dufaur _v._ The Professional Ass. Co.
For more detailed information consult Bunyon, and Pope. (See
Bibliographical Index). See also the Appendix.
I pass from life assurance to one or two other questions, which
are sometimes raised by the occurrence of suicide. The records of
English Law will furnish numerous instances in which the existence
of unsoundness of mind is not proved by the fact of subsequent
self-destruction.
The point has mostly arisen for argument in cases where it is desired
to set aside a marriage, on the ground that suicide quickly following
matrimony is evidence that there has been an absence of a sound mind,
able to make a marriage contract; or when suicide has immediately
followed the making of a will; in these cases also it has been argued
that the mere fact that suicide has taken place is proof of mental
disease, and conclusive reason for setting such a document aside.
Persons desirous of full information on these topics should consult the
reports of the cases here mentioned, viz.:─
McAdam _v._ Walker, 1 Dow. P.C. 148; in this suit the marriage was
upheld, although the bridegroom killed himself the same day.
Burrows _v._ Burrows, 1 Hagg. Eccles. Rep. 109. In this case the will
of the testator, who destroyed himself, was upheld, although the act
was committed only three days after signing the will.
In the suit of Chambers _v._ Queen’s Proctor, 2 Curt. 415, the will
was held to be good, although suicide was committed the day after
the signature of the will, and notwithstanding that it was proved by
evidence that the testator had suffered from delusions three days
before death.
Steed _v._ Calley, 1 Keen, 620, Regina _v._ Rumball, in 1843, and
Regina _v._ Farley, in 1844, are other instances of the existence of
insanity not being held to be proved by subsequent suicide.