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"Suicide by Cop" Is Covered by Suicide Exclusion in Insurance Policy
From N. Am. Co. for Life & Health Ins. v. Caldwell, decided Thursday by the Eleventh Circuit, in an opinion by Chief Judge William Pryor, joined by Judges Robin Rosenbaum and Stanley Marcus:
This appeal requires us to decide whether a life-insurance policy excludes from coverage a death resulting from suicide-by-cop. North American Company for Life and Health Insurance issued two policies for the life of Justin Caldwell that excluded "suicide" from coverage. According to the insurance company's complaint, Justin successfully carried out a plan to provoke police officers to shoot and kill him. North American sought a declaratory judgment that it did not owe the policies' beneficiaries. But the district court ruled that Justin died "as a result of being shot by another person," not "suicide," and granted a judgment on the pleadings in favor of the beneficiaries. Because the ordinary meaning of "suicide" includes suicide-by-cop, we vacate and remand….
North American issued two insurance policies for the life of Justin Caldwell. On November 9, 2018, it issued a policy that named an irrevocable trust managed by trustee Michael Harner as beneficiary. On July 9, 2020, it issued a policy that named Michelle Caldwell, Justin's wife, as beneficiary. Each policy provided a $1 million death benefit. Each also contained an essentially identical clause that excluded suicide from coverage under the policy. That clause read, "SUICIDE—If the Insured commits suicide, while sane or insane, within two years from the Policy Date, Our liability is limited to an amount equal to the total premiums paid."
On October 8, 2020, Justin began showing signs of suicidal intent after learning that Michelle wanted a divorce. According to his mother, Justin called his parents to say goodbye at 3:00 a.m. Later that morning, he told Michelle that he was "waiting for the police to come and kill [him]." And around 7:00 a.m, Michelle called 911 to report "that Justin was 'suicidal,' that he was in the family garage in possession of a rifle, a shotgun, and another firearm, that he was 'in the process of loading the weapons,' that he 'wanted to die by law enforcement,' and that he 'wanted to commit suicide by cop.'"
Police officers soon arrived at Justin and Michelle's residence, where Michelle warned them that Justin "want[ed] to die" and "intended to start shooting until law enforcement shot him." Officers tried to de-escalate the situation by urging Justin to surrender peacefully. In response, Justin cursed at the officers and ran to his truck to retrieve his rifle. The officers fired non-lethal rubber bullets to deter him, but Justin reached the truck, "grabbed the rifle, spun around, and lifted the rifle to shoot the [officers]." The officers then shot and killed Justin….
We must determine whether the word "suicide" in Justin's life insurance policies describes Justin's behavior when he intentionally provoked police officers to kill him—that is, when he committed what is colloquially known as suicide-by-cop….
To our knowledge, no American court has decided this question in a precedential opinion, so we write on a clean slate. The beneficiaries submit that suicide is "the first person act of taking one's own life." (Cleaned up.) According to the beneficiaries' argument, the method matters in that a person commits suicide only when he dies by his own hand. North American favors a broader definition that includes a person's act when he intends to die and achieves that end.
We agree with North American. A death is a suicide when a person intentionally causes his own death. As the Florida Supreme Court put it, "the words death 'by his own hand or act' should not be construed literally, but to mean death as a result of an intent on the part of the insured to take his own life." The requirements for a suicide are a person's intent to die, his voluntary act on that intent, and his resultant death. The specific method is irrelevant.
English-language and legal dictionaries confirm that the ordinary meaning of "suicide" covers any method used by someone to end his own life, including the provocation of an officer into shooting him. Suicide is an "[a]ct or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally." [Other definitions omitted. -EV] Under all these definitions, a person must do some act to commit suicide, but no definition restricts the meaning to only a limited set of qualifying acts that involve no third parties, such that Justin's actions would be excluded. In other words, these definitions do not require that the suicidal act be the final, fatal blow. Even more persuasively, definitions of the specific term "suicide-by-cop" confirm that it is a type of suicide. See, e.g., Suicide-by-cop, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) ("Slang. A form of suicide in which the suicidal person intentionally engages in life-threatening behavior to induce a police officer to shoot the person"); Suicide by cop, Oxford Eng. Dictionary (3d ed. 2020) ("[A] method of taking one's own life").
References to suicide-by-cop in other material, such as scientific journals and the news media, make clear that people from many walks of life understand the word "suicide" to cover Justin's actions. See, e.g., Ralph H. de Similien & Adamma Okorafor, Case Report, Suicide by Cop: A Psychiatric Phenomenon, 12 Am. J. Psychiatry Residents' J. 20, 21 (2017) ("Suicide by cop is a form of suicide, and those who have attempted or wish to attempt it should be approached as suicidal."); Israel Salas-Rodriguez, What Does Suicide by Cop Mean?, U.S. Sun (Apr. 24, 2021), https://www.the-sun.com/news/2765518/meaning-of-the-term-suicide-by-cop-means ("Suicide by cop or suicide by police is a suicide method …."). American courts, including an appellate court in Florida, share this understanding too, although they have not previously applied it to life insurance policies. See, e.g., Sullivan v. State, 898 So. 2d 105, 106 n.1 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2005) ("'Suicide-by-cop,' also known as 'police-assisted suicide,' is 'a form of suicide ….'" (citation omitted) (alteration adopted)); Hainze v. Richards, 207 F.3d 795, 797 n.1 (5th Cir. 2000) ("'Suicide by cop' refers to an instance in which a person attempts to commit suicide by provoking the police to use deadly force."). And common sense supports this understanding. The existence of the term "suicide-by-cop" acknowledges that a person who induces an officer to shoot him has chosen the officer as his instrument in the same way that someone else might have chosen a noose or a needle.
Even if the authorities available to us were less clear, the broader definition of "suicide" would still be most "consistent with the intent of the parties" to the life insurance policies. Life insurers do not make payouts when a person commits suicide for the same reason that home insurers do not pay an arsonist who burns down her own house. As the American Council of Life Insurers explained in an amicus brief, "it is clearly in no one's interest to create a financial incentive for someone to take their own life." Liability would thwart the purpose of insurance, which is to protect the insured from "unforeseen events rather than … events that are planned." So the question in determining whether Justin committed suicide as understood by the parties when they contracted for life insurance is whether Justin planned to end his own life when he provoked the police to kill him. As even the beneficiaries acknowledge, if we construe the facts in North American's favor, we must assume that he did.
As far as we can tell, the crux of the beneficiaries' objection to this conclusion is that Justin took his life indirectly. Under their reasoning, that an officer fired the deadly bullet sufficiently detaches Justin's death from his intent to die such that his death falls outside the ambit of "suicide." Indeed, the beneficiaries assert that these events are closer to homicide than suicide. They cite to a Maryland decision that, although not involving a suicide-by-cop, opined about how it should be classified: "[W]hen one incites a police officer to use deadly violence, we are … presented with justifiable homicide, if the officer's use of deadly force is found to be reasonable …. But [we are not] presented with suicide, for the death occurred at the hands of another." This dictum anomalously invents a directness requirement for suicide not present anywhere else. After all, if a man threw himself before a train, nobody would argue that the conductor had committed homicide.
There is no material distinction. Police officers are trained to, and have little choice but to, use deadly force to stop a civilian who threatens them, their fellow officers, and the public at large. A civilian, aware of this fact, threatens the officers to provoke this predictable and lethal response in the same way that the man who throws himself before a train anticipates the predictable, lethal outcome of being run over. In both cases, a person intentionally causes his own death, even if an external force delivers the fatal blow. In other words, he commits "suicide." …
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This is an incredibly slippery slope and a dangerous precedent.
A hypothetical — and I am thinking Bruce Willis “Die Hard with a Vengence” — a (White) person goes into a gang-infested Black neighborhood with a “I Hate N*ggers” signboard. Is that “suicide by gangbanger”?
How about breaking into the home of a known gun owner in a “stand your ground” state?
And then we come back to this case, and second guessing the cops — why did they let him get into the truck? (Why didn’t they anticipate this when he was in the garage?) Tackling him strikes me as an option. And how much did they escalate the situation by “deescalating” it?
Rubber bullets are *less* lethal force — many departments consider them an escalation to lethal force, And on a more practical point, there is no way to know that you are being shot at with them and not actual bullets. I could see a distraught person, under those circumstances, believing that the cops wanted to kill him and trying to shoot back in self defense.
Justifiable homicide, yes — but not inherently a suicide.
What makes it a dangerous precedent? I’m not seeing any particular slippery slope in saying “yep, that was suicide” when a person intentionally puts themselves in a position where another person reasonably shoots them to death. Is there a slippery slope for jumping in front of trains, trucks, regular cars?
The police were already shooting at him when he got the rifle from his truck. Had he truly been suicidal, he would have had a weapon (or facsimile when he initially encountered the police.
It’s a slippery slope because while jumping in front of a truck or train clearly is suicidal intent, merely being hit by one isn’t necessarially. People who are involved (or stop to assist at) an accident are often hit (often killed) by an oncoming vehicle. These aren’t suicides.
Maybe he went for the gun because rubber bullets weren’t getting the job done? And didn’t start out with a gun because he intended to get killed, not kill?
The man’s wife called 911 and reported that he was armed and wanted to suicide by cop. Police didn’t start shooting at him (even with rubber bullets) until he refused to surrender peacefully and ran towards his truck. What do you think the police should have done differently (that you would not count as part of this very dangerous slippery slope)?
Has it occurred to anyone that his wife might have “swatted” him?
No, because a non-suicidal person doesn’t escalate a confrontation with police to more-deadly force. Do you have any evidence for your hypothesis, or just conjecture?
Scared people who have done nothing wrong often do.
Smart cops anticipate this.
I’ll take that as “no evidence, just conjecture”, then.
Evidence free conjecture? From Dr. Ed???
I generally agree with Michael P with the following caveat: The line between intentional suicide (and I think suicide requires intent) and reckless behavior that a reasonable person would have foreseen could result in death is not always crystal clear. A drunk driver who isn’t wearing a seat belt drives into a tree and kills himself; he didn’t intentionally kill himself, but a reasonable person would have been able to predict that that result was foreseeable. So, does his widow get to collect the insurance or not? And that’s the not-always-clear line that I see: At what point is recklessness so reckless that intent is imputed?
I share that proviso. When I wrote “intentionally”, I meant with the intention of being killed, although I was not as explicit about it as I could have been.
For example, I wouldn’t include “being shot to death while committing armed robbery” as suicide unless there was a specific intent to die during the robbery.
There is a big difference between “suicidal ideation” and suicidal intent. A BIG difference — and I’d rather have more background on his mental state than just from his divorcing wife.
What about from his mother, who said that he had called to say goodbye?
The question decided here is that suicide by cop is suicide for the purpose of a life insurance policy. Which seems sensible to me. Whether that occurs in a particular instance is an ordinary question of fact to be decided by the fact-finder, judge or jury. Who can of course sometimes get it wrong, though that is unlikely here IMHO.
What’/s the next level on this “slippery slope” that you are imagining?
I think that if you could prove the person did just about anything with the specific intent to be killed, you could show it’s suicide. Here, we don’t just have his actions with the police, we have his own statements that he intended to have the cops kill him. That’s textbook suicide. You might have a burden of proof issue in some of your examples, but if there’s sufficiently clear statements of intent, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of them.
I don’t see any statements by him.
Let’s preface this by saying suicide is generally never good.
But suicide by cop is in many ways one of the worst ways to commit suicide. It creates lasting trauma on police officers who are just trying to do their job, and really don’t want to kill anyone. Not to mention the inherent danger to the police officers and others.
Admittedly, people who want to commit suicide often aren’t thinking rationally. Still, if one has a firearm in hand, there are certainly ways to commit suicide that don’t involve trauma-inducing events for police officers.
If you saw the way that some (not all) of these “officers” attempt to avoid having to shoot someone, you wouldn’t feel sorry for them.
Unholy alliance of favouring big corporations whenever possible and excusing police violence whenever possible.
Assuming the facts are as stated, the court’s conclusion was correct. The insurer negotiated a contract that excluded payment if suicide was the cause of death. He committed suicide. How is that “favoring corporations?”
He was shot by the cops, not by himself, so that’s by definition not suicide.
(At least that’s what a court would likely conclude in a jurisdiction where people don’t get shot by the police as a matter of course, unless the goal was to help the insurance company get out of its obligations.)
“so that’s by definition not suicide.”
Suicide :
adjective : of or relating to suicide
especially : performing a deliberate act resulting in the voluntary death of the person who does it
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suicide
Pointing a gun at cops is a deliberate act, done in this case voluntarily, resulting in the pointer’s death. Seems Mirriam Webster disagrees with your assertion.
“so that’s by definition not suicide”
Nice try. You are begging the question.
Hypothetical. There is a shooting range where people practice target shooting. Someone goes there, and when people start firing, he jumps in front of them, and dies from the bullets. Suicide?
By definition, suicide is dying by your own action. Stepping in front of a train would commonly be considered suicide, even though it’s the train that kills you. Jumping in front of a car too. Why would intentionally provoking someone to shoot you not count? You took actions to intentionally cause your own death. Suicide.
I defer to the “OG” Founders, the Romans,
from the original Latin, “Suicidium” meaning “To kill one’s self”
so did Julius C “Suicide”(Hate that word, just say “killed himself”) by being such a prick and strolling into Pompey’s theater unarmed??
Did Hey-Zeuss “Self Suicide” (when you start accepting stupid words you get even stupider words) by pissing off Herod and dissing Pilate??
Did Adolf H kill himself by declaring war on the US/England, and Roosh-a, well yes, but not until he sucked on a Walther,
Frank “Dansby leaving the Braves?? Goodbye Cruel World, wait, they signed Ehire Adrianza?? where’s my Ipecac???
No, not every act that results in your death is suicide. Your supposed definition errs in omitting intent. Strolling unarmed into the Theatre of Pompey was not anticipated by JC to have fatal consequences.
That policy was the one going to his estate. The one benefiting his wife was only issued three months before his death. So the timing is a bit odd in the context of a divorce, but not overly suspicious.
She also told the cops that he intended suicide so the availability of any death benefit was clearly not a consideration for her. But, yes, waiting 21 months would maybe have been worth $1M.
” Michelle called 911 to report “that Justin was ‘suicidal,’ that he was in the family garage in possession of a rifle, a shotgun, and another firearm, that he was ‘in the process of loading the weapons,’ that he ‘wanted to die by law enforcement,’ and that he ‘wanted to commit suicide by cop.'””
Could read it another way.
Michelle, who wanted to ‘divorce’ from her husband, called the cops, reported him to be ‘suicidal’ and armed.
She set up a murder-by-cop scenario.
Still no insurance for her, as she is the murderer(by cop)
And his actions when he was actually confronted by the police were part of her mind control, I suppose? If he hadn’t repeatedly tried to grab a gun and fire at officers, he’d be fine no matter what his wife had reported.
After all, if a man threw himself before a train, nobody would argue that the conductor had committed homicide.
They would if the conductor deliberately made a decision to run the guy over!
What a stupid analogy.
NOTE: I don’t necessarily have a problem with the court’s ultimate conclusion in this case. I do have a problem with the court adopting the position that cops who shoot don’t have a choice. They absolutely do.
Waiting to see whether the suicidal man fires his rifle isn’t much of a choice. Unless this court left out some significant point in the record, the police tried peaceful means, then less-lethal means, and only escalated to fully lethal means when he was pointing rifle at them. He forced their hand.
First, I really hate the phrase “didn’t have a choice” when “I don’t like the consequences of other choices” is what one really means. That’s sort of more of a generic pet peeve than about this case.
Second, there may be (are) times when the only rational choice of cops to is to shoot. But many times they can try the alternative of withdrawing from the scene. If someone is threatening innocent bystanders, then, sure, maybe cops have to shoot. If someone is threatening only himself, or only the cops confronting him, then wait or back off can be perfectly reasonable decisions.
How far do you want them to have backed off and what would you accept as a sufficient trigger for shooting him with steel bullets?
We are told that the guy wanted the cops to shoot him. Waiting until he escalates the situation by going somewhere and shooting passers-by is not obviously a superior choice.
Only the dangerous nutter dead is a cheap and happy ending so far as I am concerned.
The analogy is apt but a conductor may very well have a choice and still reasonably decide to run him down if not doing so risks killing or harming anyone on or near the train. It would still be suicide.
What if the engineer doesn’t blow the horn?
Because the suicide will get out of the way if a horn is blown to warn him that what he intends to happen is going to happen?
Trains don’t stop on a dime. You don’t “throw yourself in front of” a train that’s got time to stop. There were some antiwar protesters that got run down on a train track near here (Port Chicago? Oakland?) circa the VN war. They hadn’t “thrown themselves in front of the train”, they merely attempted to block the tracks. With unfortunate (for them) results.
Blowing the horn is a warning that the train is coming and a means to distinguish between the suicidal and the merely stupid.
The conductor often makes the decision to go ahead and hit the person instead of trying to stop so suddenly that they could derail the entire train, yes. But it would be choosing to kill a large number of people, including likely themselves, instead of allowing one to die by his own choice.
And there you have it. A formal judicial declaration that, so far as the law is concerned, police are nothing but animals, inanimate beings, things, with no conscience or consciousness, and no legal capacity for having a will of their own. They cannot legally cause events as humans can. They aren’t legally human at all. They are just tools to be manipulated.
Exactly where did the court formally declare that?
It’s even worse, the cops intentionally killed him. They could have just shot the gun out of his hand…
Or like Jim Rockford, not even use a gun (never understood, he was a “Pardoned” (in 1976 must have been Ronaldus) Felon, so legal to one a gun, but kept it hidden in a jar (yes, he would retrieve it when needed)
For the unknowing: “Rockford Files” TV show (1970’s) reference.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071042/
The pardon would probably be pre-Reagan. Brown Sr?
Ever catch the episode where he mentions how much that Answering Machine cost? One of the “Cold Opens” with the machine playing his messages is the place he bought it from pissed that he missed a payment
Reagan took office in January of 1967, and Rockford had a PI license since 1968, so it likely would have been Reagan.
Poe’s law: can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a joke.
It’s a joke.
Unlike ReaderY, who is just a serious loon.
99+% probability both propositions are true.
A snide reference, to be sure…
You are a loon.