Briefs: Assisted suicide not considered suicide+.

• Author: Ziemer, David

Byline: David Ziemer

For insurance purposes, assisted suicide isnt suicide at all, says Maryland high court

Assisted suicide is homicide, not suicide, Marylands highest court held earlier this month in interpreting an insurance contract.

The insured, Mary Gaye Fister, was depressed and wanted to die. She had debts, both personal and business, amounting to $1.2 million, owed taxes to the IRS and was under investigation for fraud involving a Ponzi scheme in which she took money from new investors to pay off prior investors.

She left several messages to friends and family saying she wanted to kill herself. She bought a 12-gauge shotgun.

But after pointing the gun at her head and repeatedly pulling a string attached to the trigger without the desired result, Fister, 43, convinced a friend to pull the trigger for her.

The states highest court, the Court of Appeals, held that her actions did not constitute suicide, and therefore her beneficiaries are entitled to $1.3 million from three life insurance policies issued by Allstate Life Insurance Co.

The policies excluded coverage for death by suicide committed within two years of the start of the contract, and she died within that two-year period.

Because we conclude that the definition of suicide unambiguously entails the intentional taking of ones own life, we hold that, as a matter of law, Fisters death was not a suicide and [the beneficiaries] are entitled to recover the benefits from the insurance policies, wrote Judge Lynne A. Battaglia for the court.

Fister did not commit suicide because she did not take her own life; rather, another person, exercising his own free will, was ultimately responsible for her death, Battaglia concluded.

The court held that this exercise of free will acted as an intervening cause, precluding a finding of suicide.

In a footnote, the top court warned that accepting an intent-based standard for suicide would be dangerous:

If such reasoning were to stand, insurance companies, so as to avoid paying death benefits, could argue, with relative ease and minimal evidence, that the decedent was dissatisfied with his or her life . . . and, to some degree, voluntarily participated in the act which resulted in his or her death (i.e. even if the decedent only negligently, for instance, walked in front of a bus).

The Oct. 12 ruling in Maria Angelique Fister, et al. v. Allstate Life Insurance Co. can be found at http://www.courts.state.md.us/opinions/coa/2001/

15a01.pdf.

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