The decided cases made it clear that I could recover only for the personal expense and pain occasioned by the accident, and not damage for loss of time or of profit occasioned thereby; and also, that if I insured my life for only $1000, it could not be assumed that my life was worth only that and nothing more, and an injury sustained estimated at a proportionate sum.[121]
I also, as a result of my researches, learned the following: If a policy provided that the company would be responsible for accidents operating from external causes, I would get something if I injured my spinal marrow by lifting my trunk;[122] but it would appear that rupture caused by jumping from the cars while in motion and afterwards running to accomplish certain business, done voluntarily and in the ordinary way, and without any necessity therefor, and with no unforeseen or involuntary movement of the body, such as stumbling, or slipping, or falling, is not caused by violent or accidental means. Though it might be otherwise if in jumping I should lose my balance and fall, or strike some unseen object, or in running should stumble or slip.[123] If, while on my travels, I should take to amateur farming (not the most likely thing in the world, bucolic desires not filling my soul, and the thermometer being down below nothing), and while pitching hay let the handle of the pitchfork slip and pitch into my bowels, producing thereby peritoneal inflammation, whereof I should die, that would be an accidental death![124] Nor would the casual change of occupation from the pursuits of the forum to that of the field, forfeit my right to recover.[125] Where an accident produced hernia, which caused death, it was held that the death was not within the exception of the policy which provided that the company did not insure against death or disability arising from rheumatism, gout, hernia, etc.[126] If I should go in bathing and die from the action of the water causing asphyxia, that, too, would be a death by external violence within the meaning of the policy, whether I swam out too far, struck my head against a rock in diving, or—unskilled in the natatorial art—got out of my depth; but if I succumbed to an attack of apoplexy while taking the bath, that would not be a death from accident.[127] A provision that no claim is to be made under a policy, except in respect of an injury caused by some “outward and visible means,” applies only to non-fatal injuries.[128]
I found also, that it was legally correct—however paradoxical it may appear—to say that I was travelling in a carriage, when in fact I was actually alighting therefrom;[129] and that I would be “travelling in a carriage provided for the transportation of passengers,” if, while in the prosecution of my journey, I walked on foot, as passengers are wont to do from one station to another. The courts, ever ready to interpret a policy in the way most advantageous to the insured,[130] will not allow “travelling in a public conveyance” to be construed literally, and if an accident happens while one is getting off or on a train, or attempting to do so for any reasonable purpose, it comes within the terms of a policy insuring against accidents while travelling by public conveyance.[131] Mr. John Wilder May (who has written a large book on Insurance) thinks that, perhaps, in a reasonable and substantially accurate sense a man may be said to be travelling by public conveyance, when he is prosecuting a journey by rail or boat, whether he is sitting still in a motionless car, or standing serenely on the station-platform, or walking to and fro thereon waiting for a start, or going into a station for prog, or returning therefrom after having grubbed;[132] although Chase, C. J., held that a man who had performed the greater part of a journey by steamboat and, there being no public conveyance, proceeded on foot to his house some miles distant from the port, could not exactly be said to be a private conveyance to himself while walking.[133] An elephant may be a traveller.[134]
A poor fellow away down in Kentucky inadvertently and needlessly put his arm out of a car window and had it injured by being bumped against a post, and the court held the injury not accidental, being attributable to the person’s own negligence.[135] But as this case stands alone, it will scarcely answer to point a moral or adorn a tale, and the better opinion seems to be that contributory negligence is no defence, as the liability rests upon contract, one of the chief objects of which is to protect a man against his own carelessness or negligence.[136] But one must not be guilty of willful and wanton exposure of himself to unnecessary danger; for instance he must not ride on the engine,[137] or attempt to cross the track when an approaching train is within fifty feet.[138]
I was now assured that to be insured was sure to bring contentment, if not riches.
FOOTNOTES:
[110] Sinclair v. Maritime Pass. Ass. Co., 3 El. & E. 478.
[111] Ripley v. Rw. Pass. Ass. Co., 2 Bigelow, Ins. Cases, 738.
[112] Prov. Life Ins. & Inv. Co. v. Martin, 32 Maryland, 310.
[113] Mallory v. Travellers Ins. Co., 47 N. Y. 52.