Horace Gray

“ The defendant requested the circuit court to direct a verdict for the defendant, because the former judgment was a bar, and afterwards objected to the introduction by the plaintiff of evidence of the condition of Ferguson's mind at the time of his death, because that question had been tried and determined in the former action. The court rightly denied the request, and overruled the objection. A judgment of nonsuit does not determine the rights of the parties, and is no bar to a new action. ”

“ The remaining, and the most important, question in the case is whether a self-killing by an insane person, having sufficient mental capacity to understand the deadly nature and consequences of his act, but not its moral aspect and character, is a death by suicide, within the meaning of the policy. This is the very question that was presented to this court in 1872 in the case of Life Ins. ”

“ Justice NELSON, when chief justice of New York, in the earliest American case upon the subject: 'Speaking legally, also, (and the policy should be subjected to this test,) self-destruction by a fellow-being bereft of reason can with no more propriety be ascribed to his own hand than to the deadly instrument that may have been used for the purpose;' and, whether it was by drowning, or poisoning, or hanging, or in any other manner, 'was no more his act, in the sense of the law, than if he had been impelled by irresistible physical power.' Breasted v. ”

“ If a man's reason is so clouded or disturbed by insanity as to prevent his understanding the real nature of his act, as regards either its physical consequences or its moral aspect, the case appears to us to come within the forcible words uttered by the late Mr. ”

“ Farmers' Ins. Co. 48 N. H. 41; St. Louis Ins. Co. v. Graves, 6 Bush, 268; Nimick v. Mutual Life Ins. Co. 10 Amer. Law. Reg. (N. S.) 101; Gay v. Union Ins. Co. 9 Blatchf. C. C. 142; Terry v. Life Ins. Co. ”