Rebman v. General Accident Insurance

Citations

• 217 Pa. 518
• 66 A. 859
• 1907 Pa. LEXIS 749

Syllabus

<p>Insurance — Accident insurance — Voluntary exposure to danger — Jumping on moving train.</p> <p>A provision in an accident insurance policy that the policy should not apply where death or disability resulted “from voluntary exposure to unnecessary danger,” applies whenever the insured is injured in a manner that should have been anticipated while voluntarily doing something that ordinary prudence would forbid.</p> <p>An attempt by a man sixty-six years of age, weighing 184 pounds, with an umbrella under his arm, to get upon a train running at the rate of six or eight miles an hour, is such a “voluntary exposure to unnecessary danger” as will relieve the insurance company from liability for his death resulting from the attempt to board the train. In such a case the fact that the insured may have believed that the train would stop at the station where he attempted to board it, is immaterial.</p> <p>Mestrezat and Stewart, JJ., dissent.</p>