cnAn1>.•.L v. Acoinmr ms. oo. 43
sues, is not such an injury as much the result of accident as if, in l
the same circumstances, the injury results from other external forces,
such as falling from the platform of a moving train ?
In Hill v. Insurance O0., 22 Hun, 189, the insured took poison by
mistake, and died suddenly. The court said that death occurred
through accidental means. The taking of the poison was not the re-
sult of the will or intention of the person, and was therefore not his
voluntary act. lt was adjudged, however, that the plaintiff could
not recover, on the ground that the policy contained a clause that the
company should not be liable if death should be caused by taking `
_ poison; and this clause was held to exempt the company from liabil-
ity, whether the poison was taken intentionally or by mistake.
In Pierce v. Travelers Ins. Co., 34 Wis. 395, Mr. Chief Justice
Dixon, speaking for the court, in interpreting the clause in the policy
in question in that case, referred to instances of death resulting from
an act committed under the influence of de1irium,—as if the person
should, in a paroxysm of fever, precipitate himself from a window,
or, having been bled. remove the bandages, or should take poison by
mistake,-and observed that deaths thus produced "are more prop-
erly denominated deaths by accident than deaths by suicide. * * *
Deaths so caused are held to be deaths by accident, within the mean·
ing and purpose of policies of insurance against accident; as where
a man negligently draws a loaded gun towards him by the muzzle,
or the servant ills the lighted lamp with kerosene, and the gun is
discharged and the lamp explodes."
In Horn v. Life Ins. C0., 7 Jur. (N. S.) 673, the court, in passing
upon the question whether a policy of insurance upon life is rendered
void by the suicide of the insured when insane, speaks of such a
death as just as much an accident as if the insured had fallen from
the top of a house.
In Breusted v Farmer? L. cf T. C0., 8 N, Y. 306, itpwas ob-
served by the court that "a death by accident, and a death by the
party’s own hand, when deprived of reason, stand, on principle, in ‘
the same category. In both cases the act is done without a con-
trolling mind." I
To maintain the position that because his own hand constituted
the violent means employed by the insured in taking his life, those
means were not external and accidental, it is necessary to take a
distinction between force emanating from the insane person himself
and force operating independently from without. I can hardly think
there is ground for such a distinction. The injury and the death
seem equally fortuitous in both cases, for in neither case is there a
concurring will which prompts the act. An insane man burns his
own insured property. The insurer is nevertheless liable for the loss
unless its contract expressly exempts it from liability, even in case of
such a burning; this for the reason that the act was not voluntary,
or done with the assent, procurement, or design of the assured as a
!