Meadows v. Pacific Mutual Life Insurance

31 S.W. 578, 129 Mo. 76, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 125
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJune 4, 1895
StatusPublished
Cited by53 cases

This text of 31 S.W. 578 (Meadows v. Pacific Mutual Life Insurance) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Meadows v. Pacific Mutual Life Insurance, 31 S.W. 578, 129 Mo. 76, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 125 (Mo. 1895).

Opinion

Gantt, P. J.

This is an action on an accident insurance policy by the administrator of the assured, Daniel A. Meadows, deceased, for $5,000. The petition contains the usual averments, and alleges that said Daniel A. Meadows lost his life on or about July 30, 1892, by being “accidentally run upon and over by a car or train of cars, on the track of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company, at the city ofChillicothe, in the state of Missouri,” and prayed judgment for the sum assured.

The answer is a general denial and a plea of the following conditions in the policy, to wit:

“The claimant shall establish affirmatively under any claim or proceeding thereunder, that the injury or death resulted from actual accident according to the policy.” And, further: “The insured agrees to use due diligence for personal safety and protection; and this insurance does not cover, and the company will not be liable for, injury nor '-death while engaged in, caused by, resulting from, or attributable partially or wholly to any of the following causes: Voluntary exposure to unnecessary danger or perilous venture, violating law or the rules of any company or corporation, intentional injuries inflicted by the insured or any other person, or entering or trying to enter or [83]*83leave any moving conveyance propelled by steam power, or riding in or upon any such conveyance not provided for the transportation of passengers or being upon a railroad bridge, trestle, or roadbed.”

The answer pleaded that the deceased was acting in violation of said conditions at the time of the accident, and that his death occurred by reason of such violation, and by reason of voluntary exposure to unnecessary danger, and by reason of being upon the roadbed of the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad at Chillicothe, Missouri.

The policy contained the conditions pleaded in the answer, and a great number of other conditions exempting the company from liability for- accidents of almost every conceivable character. Indeed, it is somewhat difficult to name an accident, as society is now constituted, for which defendant would be liable, if a strict technical construction is indulged as to each of these conditions. The sixth clause of the conditions indorsed upon the policy is as follows:

“6. This insurance does not cover, and the company will not be1 liable for disappearances, nor injury (nor death resulting from the same) of which there is no visible mark upon the body of the insured, the body itself, in case of death, not being considered such mark produced at the time of and by the accident; nor injury nor death, while engaged in, caused by, resulting from, or attributable partially or wholly to any of the following causes: Disease or bodily infirmity, or act committed by the insured while under mental aberration produced by disease or bodily infirmity, fits, vertigo, hernia, sleep walking, intoxication, use of narcotics or anesthetics, medical or surgical treatment (amputation rendered necessary by the injury and made within ninety days excepted), sunstroke, freezing, taking of poison, contact with poisonous sub[84]*84stances, inhalation of gas or vapor (voluntary or otherwise), war or riot, quarreling or dueling, fighting, wrestling, racing, excessive lifting, voluntary over exertion, gymnastic sports (except for amusement), suicide (sane or insane), any vicious act, voluntary exposure to unnecessary danger or perilous venture (unless in the humane effort to save human life), violating law or the rules of any company or corporation, intentional injuries inflicted by the insured or any other person (except as hereinafter otherwise provided), or entering or trying to enter or leave any moving conveyance propelled by steam power (except cable or electric cars), or riding in or upon any such conveyance not provided for the transportation of passengers, or being upon a railroad bridge, trestle or roadbed (railroad officers and employes while engaged in their prescribed duties as such excepted).”

There was a reply denying that deceased had broken any condition of the policy. Plaintiff obtained judgment, and defendant appeals. The facts are as follows:

It was admitted at the trial that plaintiff was the qualified and acting administrator of the estate of Daniel Meadows; that notice of his death was given and that due proof was furnished as required by the policy.

Daniel Meadows, at the time of his death, was a stock man, fifty-nine years old, engaged in buying and selling mules. On the night of his death, he went on the Wabash railroad from Gallatin to Chillicothe. At Gallatin he and witness Noll had a conversation. He said he lived in St. Joseph, and seemed very anxious to get home, and, on being asked what he was going to Chillicothe for, when he could take the Rock Island road for home, said he .could go to Chillicothe and catch a train there almost any time, and he could not [85]*85on the Rock Island. At Chillicothe about 1 a. m. that night, he talked with John Fitzpatrick, the night telegraph operator, at the window at the Wabash depot, for a few minutes, and inquired when he could get a train for St. Joe, and was told he could get a passenger train at 4:20 a. m. On being told that there was a freight train there, but it would not carry passengers, he said “I am a stock man, and they all know me. I am a stock man, and they will carry me.” He then left and went west from the depot to Elm street, thence south on Elm street. At this time an east bound freight train was standing on the north track of the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad, east of Elm street, and a west bound train on the side track.

Ten or fifteen minutes afterward the night operator, with whom he had been talking, heard a yell, as if from someone in distress, and at the same time heard a train moving. It was a very dark night. Both' the east and west bound freights were there in the yards, the east bound train being on the north and main track. About eight car lengths east of where the caboose of that east bound freight stood that night, and about opposite the usual place for the west bound freight to stand on the side track, the body was afterward found, about 2 a. m., cut in two, the lower part between the rails of the main track, and the upper part between the passing track and the main track. The body was cut diagonally across. The body was first found by John Slaughter, a brakeman on the west bound freight train. That train pulled into the yards and stopped with its engine at the tank, fifteen or twenty yards west of the Hannibal depot, to take water, and then pulled in on the passing track to wait for the east bound train to pull out. The two trains were not on the tracks together for any length of time. After the east bound train had gone, Slaughter started [86]*86ahead to change the switch, and found the legs of the body between the rails of the north track, and the upper part of the body just south of the south rail of that track. Slaughter touched the face of the body, and found it not yet cold.

Two east bound freights passed through Chillicothe that night. The first one met the west Mound freight tea miles east of Chillicothe; it stopped at Chillicothe about five minutes, did no switching; it pulled in slowly with the headlight burning; the engineer could have seen a man or the body' of a man on the track, but saw nothing of the kind. He examined the wheels of his engine at Brookfield when he heard of the accident and saw no indications of having run over a man.

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Bluebook (online)
31 S.W. 578, 129 Mo. 76, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 125, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/meadows-v-pacific-mutual-life-insurance-mo-1895.