Bradley v. . the Mutual Benefit Life Ins. Co. , 45 N.Y. 422 ( 1871 )

[EDITORS' NOTE: THIS PAGE CONTAINS HEADNOTES. HEADNOTES ARE NOT AN OFFICIAL PRODUCT OF THE COURT, THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED.] The question directly presented by this appeal is whether, upon the evidence adduced at the trial, any question of fact arose which should have been submitted to the jury.

The counsel for the plaintiff insisted that, whether Cluff came to his death under such circumstances as to defeat a recovery, was a question for the jury, and also requested the court to submit to the jury the question whether the death of Cluff was a reasonable, rightful or excusable result of any known violation of law by him. But the court declined to submit that question to the jury, and decided that there was no question of fact in the case for their determination, and dismissed the plaintiff's complaint. Exceptions were duly taken to these decisions.

To justify this disposition of the case, it must clearly appear that it was established upon the trial, by uncontroverted evidence, that the death of Cluff happened under such circumstances as to fall within the excepted risks mentioned in the proviso contained in the policy.

The first step in the inquiry is the construction of this proviso. The exact interpretation to be given to the words "in case he shall die * * * in the known violation of any law of these States," etc., has been the subject of serious debate. In another action upon a like policy of the same company on the life of the same party, which was tried four times in the State of Massachusetts, the Supreme Court of that State, in a carefully considered opinion, held that the proviso must be construed to refer to a voluntary criminal act on the part of the insured, known by him at the time to be a crime against the law of the State, and not to mere trespasses against property or infringements of civil laws to which no criminal consequences are attached. (Cluff v. Mut. Ben. L. Ins. Co., 13 Allen, 308, 316, 317; S.C., 99 Mass. 318.) This conclusion is based by that learned court upon the natural import of the words "known violation of law," and upon their being found immediately following the words "by the hands of justice." A similar construction was adopted by the Supreme Court of Missouri, in the cases of Harper's Administrators v. The Phœnix Ins. Co. (19 Mo., 500, and 39 Mo., 122); and the case of Breasted v. TheFarmers' L. T. Co. (4 Seld., 299) has some bearing in the same direction.

The Supreme Court of this State, whose decision is now under review, do not agree to the interpretation given to the proviso by the courts of Massachusetts and Missouri, and a difference of opinion exists between the members of this court as to whether the proviso applies only to violations of the criminal law, or whether it embraces all illegal acts of such a character as to lead to violence. But, independently of that question, and whatever be the nature of the violation of law urged by the insurance company, as avoiding the policy, it seems to be clear that a relation must exist between the violation of law and the death, to make good the defence; that the death must have been caused by the violation of law to exempt the company from liability. It cannot be the true meaning of the proviso that the policy is to be avoided by the mere fact that, at the time of the death, the assured was violating the law, if the death occurred from some cause other than such violation.

This position is fully sustained by the opinions of the court in the Massachusetts case, and seems to be conceded by the opinion of the Supreme Court, in the case now under review. Nor do I understand it to be controverted by the members of this court, who differ from the result at which I have arrived.

The more difficult question arises at the next step in the inquiry, namely, whether conceding that the act of Cluff, in attempting to detach the horses of Cox from the wagon was unlawful, and known by him so to be, the fact that his death was caused by that act, was so clearly established by uncontroverted testimony, as to justify the court in withdrawing the case from the jury, and dismissing the complaint.

In examining this question, it is necessary to throw out of view, all circumstances as to which the evidence was conflicting, and to look at the facts in the most favorable light for the plaintiff, in which the jury would have been at liberty to find them.

If any view of the facts, which the jury would have been justified in taking, would have sustained a verdict for the plaintiff, the dismissal of the complaint was erroneous.

Two witnesses only were examined as to the circumstances under which the death occurred. One of them (Scott) testified to a struggle between Cox and the deceased, and a blow inflicted by the deceased upon Cox, which was followed by the shot. The other witness, Dr. Bugbee, testified that he was the nearest person to the parties, and thought he saw all that occurred, but that he saw no scuffle or striking, and he states positively that the deceased did not assault Cox or threaten him; that the only threat was to take the horses, and there was no threat of personal violence on either side; that Cox was not beaten by deceased, nor personally attacked or assaulted; that after deceased had got possession of the lines, Cox (who had previously jumped from the wagon), started for the house, leaving Cluff standing by the heads of the horses; that when Cox got to the rear of the wagon, he turned, drew a revolver, and shot deceased, and then cocked his pistol to fire again, but hearing deceased say that he was hit, did not shoot again, but ran for the house; that Cluff died in the arms of the witness without uttering a word.

The jury were at liberty to adopt the statement of whichever of these witnesses appeared to them most credible. Although negative testimony is ordinarily of less weight than positive, yet it is not to be disregarded, but the jury have a right to consider it; and where a witness testifies that he was in a position to see the whole transaction, and as to certain things testified to by another witness, states positively that they did not occur, and as to other things, that he did not see them, there is such a contradiction as would justify the jury in discrediting or disregarding the evidence of one or the other of the witnesses.

Adopting the version of the transaction given by Dr. Bugbee, as the jury might have done, had the case been submitted to them, and considering his statement in connection with the other facts proved bearing upon the relations existing between Cox and Cluff, can it be said that beyond all question the act of Cox in firing upon and killing Cluff was caused by his attempt to take the horses, and was not an unjustifiable and wanton act, prompted by feelings of malice and revenge? It is not enough to say that, if Cluff had not made the attempt, he would not have been killed. The killing must have been a natural and reasonable consequence of the attempt to warrant a decision that it was caused thereby. Cluff's going to Louisiana and his taking a lease of the farm were links in the chain of circumstances which ended in his death. If he had not done those things he would not have been killed as he was. Yet it would not be reasonable to say that those acts were the causes of his death.

In The Bank of Ireland v. Trustees of Evans Charities (5 House of Lords Cases, 410), the fraud could not have been perpetrated, if the trustees had kept the seal securely. Yet it was held that negligence in the custody of the seal was too remotely connected with the fraud to render the trustees liable; for, as the court say, "the transfer was not the necessary or likely result of that negligence." See opinion of ERLE, Ch. J., in Ionides v. Universal Marine Ins. Co. (14 C.B.N.S., 259).

The proximate and not the remote cause must be regarded. The immediate cause of death was the shooting; and if Cluff so conducted himself that the shooting was a natural, reasonable and legitimate consequence of his acts, then it may be said that they caused the shooting. But if Cox fired with intent to kill, and his act was wholly beyond the scope of lawful resistance to the trespass of Cluff, and the provocation given by the latter was totally inadequate to excite or justify the character of violence which was used, and if the circumstances of the killing were such that rational men would attribute it to wanton malice rather than to an endeavor to resist aggression or even to natural indignation, then, although the deceased was in the wrong in the first instance, his wrong was but a remote and not a proximate cause of the death, and other causes, for which he was not responsible, intervened. Some analogy is afforded by the common-law rules in respect to acts of provocation, which will reduce a homicide from murder to manslaughter. In theCommonwealth v. Drew (4 Mass., 396), Chief Justice PARSONS states as a rule of law, that a trespass barely against the property of another, not his dwelling-house, is not a provocation sufficient to warrant the owner in using a deadly weapon; and if he do, and with it kill the trespasser, this will be murder, because it is an act of violence beyond the degree of the provocation; and as a general rule, every willful and intentional killing, with out a justifiable cause, if done with deliberation, and not in the heat of passion, is murder, and legal malice is always implied in such cases. (Per WALWORTH, Ch. 2 Park's Cr. R., 28.) Here it was not even left to the jury to say whether the killing was in the heat of passion. If the acts imputed to Cluff, though illegal, were not sufficient inducement to the homicide even to reduce the grade of the offence, it can hardly be said that they were the cause of his death.

The diversity in the statements of the witnesses as to the circumstances of the killing, and the necessity of an inquiry into the motive which actuated Cox, render it impossible to determine, as a question of law, that the killing was a reasonable or natural consequence of the acts of Cluff.

So long as the evidence falls short of establishing that the homicide was legally justifiable, I can see no safe rule by which the court could be guided in deciding that the provocation proved was the cause of the killing, and in withdrawing that question from the consideration of the jury.

The learned court in Massachusetts express the opinion that if Cox shot Cluff, not in the course of the affray, but merely to revenge himself for what had been done, the case would not be within the proviso. (13 Allen, 318.)

This distinction is reasonable and seems to be applicable, whether Cluff's violation of law was criminal or not. If Cox abandoned the horses and started for his home, and afterward changed his mind, turned and maliciously shot Cluff, that was a new and independent event. There was some evidence to sustain that theory of the case. Bugbee testifies that Cluff got possession of the lines, and Cox started for the house; Cluff still standing by the horses' heads. That when Cox got to the rear of the wagon he turned, drew a revolver and shot Cluff, and cooked his pistol for a second shot, when, finding that Cluff was hit, he ran away.

It was impossible for the court to say, on this evidence, when Cox first formed the design of shooting, and that he did not intentionally and maliciously take the life of Cluff to satisfy his own feelings of revenge, after the seizure of the horses had been effected, and he had abandoned them. The accuracy of the aim, and the attempt to fire a second shot at an apparently unarmed man, were circumstances from which malice could be inferred. Furthermore, there were circumstances from which a hostile state of feeling on the part of Cox could be inferred independently of the taking of the horses. Cluff was turning the family of Cox off the farm, was hurrying their departure, and insisting upon their paying for the feed consumed by their cattle, and the tone of the conversation between Cluff and Cox evinced an angry state of feeling, which may have contributed quite as much as the taking of the horses, to the deadly assault made by Cox.

Under all these circumstances I think that the case should have been submitted to the jury, as requested by the plaintiff's counsel to determine under proper instructions, whether the death of Cluff was caused by a known violation of law on his part, and whether the act of Cox which produced the death, was a natural, reasonable or legitimate consequence of the acts of Cluff. The determination of these questions involved so many doubtful questions of fact, that they could not properly be disposed of by the court. One witness testifies to a personal conflict. The other denies it. If the first witness is to be believed, the blow struck by Cluff may have been the provocation for the shot; but the court could not act upon that statement, because it was contradicted. Under that state of the evidence, to decide the controversy by saying that, if the blow was not struck, the seizure of the horses was the cause of the shot, is subject to the objections, not only that it disposes of the case upon a hypothesis, and without ascertaining the actual facts, but that it involves a disregard of the circumstances tending to show that the shooting was with intent to kill, and a willful and deliberate act of malice or revenge, and does not even leave it to the jury to determine whether the killing was in the heat of passion, caused by the act of Cluff.

It would hardly be contended that if one should intentionally and deliberately kill another in consequence of some slight violation of a civil right, such as walking across his land without his permission, or other trivial trespass, the case would fall within the proviso, for no one would hesitate to say, that in the case supposed, the unlawful act of the deceased was a totally inadequate cause for the killing. Yet between such an act as that, and one which would in law justify the killing of the offender, there are an infinity of supposable cases involving different degrees of provocation, which cannot be measured so as to determine, as matter of law, their adequacy to produce a fatal result; and it can hardly be laid down, as a rule of law, that an attempt to take one's horses for debt, without process, but without any threat of personal violence, is of itself an adequate cause for intentionally killing the offender, and that a killing during or immediately after such an attempt, must necessarily be held a legitimate consequence of the act. Such an act may lead to violence, and, if any act of violence of the character which would naturally be resorted to, as a measure of resistance, should result in death, the necessary connection between the original illegal act, and the death, might be established. But the intentional killing of another with a deadly weapon under such circumstances, is a totally different affair, and cannot be held as matter of law, to be a natural or reasonable result or consequence of the original offence. It follows that the uncontroverted facts were not sufficient to justify a dismissal of the complaint, and that the case should have been submitted to the jury with proper instructions.

The judgment should be reversed, and a new trial ordered, with costs to abide the event.