After Caldwell’s beneficiaries sought to collect the $1 million death benefits under his insurance policies, the insurer filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, seeking a ruling that the beneficiaries were not entitled to recovery under the suicide exclusion. The beneficiaries answered and moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). For purposes of the motion, the parties essentially agreed that Mr. Caldwell “provoked law enforcement into fatally shooting him.” Accordingly, the only issue before the court was a definitional one—whether the term “suicide” extended to death at the hand of a third party. The district court found for the beneficiaries, noting that “the term ‘suicide’ encompasses the act of killing oneself—not the killing of a person by another.”
Method Does Not Matter
On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. Rather than adopting the narrow definition employed by the district court, the Eleventh Circuit focused on proximate cause and intent. “A death is a suicide when a person intentionally causes his own death. [] The specific method is irrelevant.” Citing numerous dictionaries, scientific journals, and non-precedential opinions, the court observed that “no definition restricts the meaning to only a limited set of qualifying acts that involve no third parties.”
The court rejected the beneficiaries’ argument that suicide cannot be accomplished indirectly. “After all, if a man threw himself before a train, nobody would argue that the conductor had committed homicide.” The court made clear that it was not creating a bright-line rule. “We do not decide that the ordinary meaning of ‘suicide’ covers all imaginable instances of suicide-by-cop, but ‘suicide’ certainly covers [Caldwell’s] specific behavior in pointing his gun at police officers to provoke them into shooting and killing him as part of his plan to end his own life.”
Section leaders agree with the holding. “The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion is well-reasoned, noting that it is the intent of the insured that determines the question, not the actual means of death,” comments D. Larry Kristinik, Columbia, SC, vice-chair of the Litigation Section. Kristinik notes, however, that this decision is unlikely to prevent future claims for life insurance proceeds in similar circumstances. “Questions of intent can become very murky and almost always present a fact issue for the jury.”
It’s All About the Facts
The absence of a factual dispute ultimately determined the issue. “The devil is in the details of what Mr. Caldwell actually intended as a matter of fact by holing up in his garage with firearms, knowing the police were outside,” explains John C. Bonnie, Atlanta, GA, cochair of the Section’s Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee. “According to the beneficiaries’ answer, Mr. Caldwell never said he wanted to commit suicide or that he wanted to die from ‘suicide by cop.’ He was just sitting and cleaning his guns and getting his belongings together (like photo albums) to leave the house, and he had no other ‘intentions’ that day despite the concerns of his family. But the admission that Mr. Caldwell intended to kill himself was fatal to the potential fact question set up in the answer.”
Recognizing the possibility that “more homicides could be considered suicide following this case,” Mark A. Romance, Miami, FL, cochair of the Section’s Commercial & Business Litigation Committee, suggests practitioners take a lesson from this opinion. He counsels that attorneys on both sides of the issue should strategically focus on “evidence of proximate cause and intent.”
This focus on intent and proximate cause is likely what the beneficiaries will try on remand, Bonnie adds. “I imagine they will now aggressively contest what was deemed true in their Rule 12(c) motion—that Mr. Caldwell was suicidal and both threatened or wanted to commit suicide by cop. How that will impact jury questions or summary judgment motions remains to be seen.”