[105] Hunt v. Pownal, 9 Vt. 411.
[106] Moore v. Abbot, 32 Me. 46.
[107] Moulton v. Sanford, 51 Me. 127; Horton v. Taunton, 97 Mass 266, n.
[108] Davis v. Dudley, 4 Allen, 557.
[109] Titus v. Northbridge, 97 Mass. 258.
CHAPTER III.
INSURANCE.
What’s an Accident?—Major Vis.—Exposure and Death.—Wholly disabled.—What can be recovered.—Heavy Weights.—Stumbling.—Pitchforked.—Change of Business.—Lost beneath the Dancing Waves.—A Man not a Private Conveyance.—Carelessness.
Shortly after the events related in my last chapter, I expected business to call me away from home. Accidents by rail—explosions, collisions, over-turnings, exploits of the fire-fiend—had become so much the reverse of angel’s visits, that though some said I had the hanging mark upon me, I determined to make assurance doubly sure and take a bond of fate in the shape of an “accident ticket;” not that hope told a flattering tale, or that vain expectations of making anything by the transaction filled my soul, but as a preventive rather than a cure, for accidents seldom happen when one is prepared, as showers seldom descend when one is armed cap-a-pie with umbrella and thick boots.
Ere spending my twenty cents, however, I determined to find out what an accident, within the meaning of the ticket, really might be; but I discovered that no satisfactory definition of the word had ever been given by the courts. Cockburn, C. J., says that it means some violence, casualty, or vis major; and that disease or death, generated by exposure to heat, cold, damp, the vicissitudes of climate or atmospheric influences, cannot be called accidental, unless, perhaps, where the exposure is actually brought about by circumstances which might give it the character of accident,—as a shipwrecked mariner dying from exposure to cold and wet in a small boat upon the roaring, raging ocean.[110] This decision settled that I could recover nothing if my nose or my toes were frozen off; nor if my early demise was brought about by croup, measles, or small-pox, caught in the cars, could my family recover any remuneration for the loss of the house-band. If, like the good Samaritan’s friend, I should chance to fall among thieves, who should strip me of my raiment, wound me, and depart leaving me dead, that, probably, would be considered a death by violent and accidental means, for Judge Withey, of Michigan, has laid it down that an accident is any event which takes place without the foresight or expectation of the person, acted upon or affected by the event.[111] In Maryland it has been defined as an unusual and unexpected result attending the performance of a usual and necessary act; and there it has been decided that every injury caused by accident, save those specially excepted by the policy, are covered by it.[112] And in New York an accident is said to be something which takes place without any intelligent or apparent cause, without design and out of course.[113]
I was pleased to find that I might recover for a “railway accident,” if anything happened to me while travelling by the cars, although nothing happened to the train, for instance, if while getting out, after the cars had stopped, I should slip, fall, and injure myself, not through any negligence of my own, but because the steps were slippery;[114] and that any money to which I might become entitled under the policy would not in any way lessen the damages which I might claim against the carrier for any injuries received to my corpus.[115] This is only fair, as one pays premiums to insure himself on the understanding that his right to be compensated when he is injured is an equivalent for the premium paid. It is a quid pro quo; larger if he gets it, on the chance that he may never get it at all.[116] Where compensation to the insured is granted “in case of bodily injury of so serious a nature as wholly to disable the assured from following his usual business, occupation, or pursuits,” I would be entitled to pay if so disabled that I could not get to my office to work, although I were well enough to transact business in my own bedroom, or clad in a robe de nuit instead of a professional toga.[117] For total disability from the prosecution of one’s usual employment means inability to follow one’s usual occupation, business, or pursuits in the usual way:[118] i. e., e. g., a farmer who can do nothing but milk, and a merchant who can only keep his books, are totally disabled within the meaning of such a provision as the above.[119] To be wholly or quite disabled is to be unable to do what one is called upon to do in the ordinary course of business, and this is by no means the same thing as being “unable to do any part of one’s business.”[120]