460   MATURITY OF THE POLICY

There were several policies in suit—all alike in tenor, and all payable to the insured, his executors, administrators and assigns. The real contracts, as evidenced by the applications for them, excepted death by suicide within two years—which time had not elapsed; but, by virtue of a statute of Pennsylvania, where the con-tracts were made, the trial court had ruled out the applications, because not attached to the policies, which themselves expressed no such exception. The proof was plenary that the insurance was pro-cured with the intent to commit suicide, but as the trial court had expressly charged the jury that there could, in no case, be recovery if the insured had taken his own life designedly while of sound mind, the general question was necessarily involved. The decision was that because the verdict established that Runk, the insured, had committed suicide while sane, his executor could not recover. The Supreme Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Harlan, held (at p. 160) that the death of the insured, "if directly and intentionally caused by himself. when in sound mind, was not a risk intended to be covered or which could legally have been covered, by the policies in suit.75

Diligent research has led to a discovery of no other reported case directly adjudging that suicide will bar recovery upon a policy not excepting it in express terms (and not procured with the intention of committing suicide), except that the later one of Hopkins v. North Western Life Insurance Co., 95 Fed. Rep. 729, where a United States Circuit Court, being bound by the Ritter case, ex-tended, and, I think, logically extended, the bar against recovery to a policy taken out by the insured for the benefit of his wife. The judgment was affirmed, however, upon other grounds. Hopkins v. North Western Life Insurance Co., 99 Id. 199; 40 C. C. A. 1.

I will consider, first, the proposition that sane suicide, though unexcepted in express terms, is not a risk intended to be covered by a life insurance contract. * * *

Of course, the question is an open one, and the views of so influential a tribunal as the Supreme Court of the United States deserves most careful consideration. The reason for implying the exception is thus stated by Justice Harlan (169 U. S. 153) : "In the case of fire insurance it is well settled that although a policy in the usual form indemnifying against loss by fire may cover a loss attributable merely to the negligence or carelessness of the insured, unaffected by fraud or design, it will not cover a destruction of the property by the wilful act of the assured himself in setting fire to it, not for the purpose of avoiding a peril of a worse kind, but with the intention of simply effecting its destruction. Much more should it be held that it is not contemplated by a policy taken out by the person whose life is insured and stipulating for the payment

5 For a note discussing the Ritter case, see (1898) 11 Harv. L. Rev. 547.