The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, reversing a district court's decision, has ruled that an insured's death from autoerotic asphyxiation was an “intentionally self-inflicted injury” within the meaning of accidental death and dismemberment riders to two life insurance policies and, therefore, that the insured's widow was not entitled to recover AD&D benefits.
The Case
In August 2016, while home alone in Wilmette, Illinois, Linno Llenos hung a noose from a ceiling beam in his basement, stood up on a stool with the noose around his neck, and stepped off. He died as a result.
When his wife, LeTran Tran, came home, she found her husband's body hanging in the basement and immediately called police. Although his death initially was reported a suicide, the medical examiner subsequently concluded from sexual paraphernalia on Mr. Llenos' body that he died performing autoerotic asphyxiation – a sexual practice by which a person purposefully restricts blood flow to the brain to induce a feeling of euphoria. The pleasurable feeling experienced during autoerotic asphyxiation derives from cerebral hypoxia, or brain cell death from deprivation of oxygen.
Mr. Llenos was covered by two life insurance policies issued by Minnesota Life Insurance Company: a basic insurance policy and a supplemental insurance policy. These provided $517,000 in coverage. Each policy also included AD&D riders.
The basic insurance policy provided an additional $10,000 of AD&D coverage, and the supplemental insurance policy provided an additional $50,000 of AD&D coverage.
After her husband's death, Ms. Tran filed a claim with Minnesota Life, which paid the $517,000 but denied her claim for the additional $60,000 in AD&D coverage. Among other things, Minnesota Life took the position that his death fell under an exclusion for intentionally self-inflicted injury, which stated:
In no event will we pay the accidental death or dismemberment benefit where an insured's death or dismemberment results from or is caused directly by any of the following: . . . intentionally self-inflicted injury or any attempt at self-inflicted injury, whether sane or insane. . . .
(Emphasis added.)
Ms. Tran appealed the decision internally at Minnesota Life and again was denied.
She then brought suit under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, seeking the AD&D benefits.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois awarded judgment in favor of Ms. Tran, concluding that reasonable minds could disagree about whether Mr. Llenos' intentional inducement of cerebral hypoxia was a self-inflicted injury within the meaning of the AD&D rider. Construing the ambiguity against Minnesota Life, the district court ruled that the exclusion for intentional injuries did not apply to autoerotic asphyxiation and it entered judgment in favor of Ms. Tran.
Minnesota Life appealed to the Seventh Circuit.
The Seventh Circuit's Decision
The circuit court reversed.
In its decision, the Seventh Circuit reasoned that Mr. Llenos placed a noose around his neck and stepped off a stool, strangling himself. The resulting hypoxia caused his euphoria, his black out, and his death, “all the result of one intentionally inflicted injury.”
The Seventh Circuit added that even if Mr. Llenos' autoerotic asphyxiation injury could be viewed in different “stages” of strangulation, the partial strangulation he sought to inflict still was an “injury” as the term was commonly understood, and thus fell within the exclusion. In the Seventh Circuit's opinion, a person of average intelligence and experience “would consider choking oneself by hanging from a noose to be an injury,” even if that strangulation was only “partial.”
Moreover, the circuit court continued, the fact that Mr. Llenos performed the act on himself and enjoyed the accompanying euphoria did “not make partial strangulation less of an injury.” The circuit court added that the “popularity of autoerotic asphyxiation” was not relevant, and that the harm was still an injury, “regardless of its popularity or the pleasure some people may derive from it.”
The Seventh Circuit concluded:
Strangling oneself to cut off oxygen to one's brain is an injury, full stop. When that injury kills, it is “an intentionally self-inflicted injury which resulted in death,” regardless of whether it was done recreationally or with an intent to survive. . . . Under the plain and ordinary meaning of [Mr. Llenos'] AD&D riders, his death is excluded from coverage.
The case is Tran v. Minnesota Life Ins. Co., No. 18-1723 (7th Cir. April 29, 2019). Attorneys involved include: For LETRAN TRAN, Plaintiff – Appellee: Bradley A. Skafish, Attorney, DEUTSCHMAN & ASSOCIATES, P.C., Chicago, IL. For MINNESOTA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant – Appellant: Jacqueline J. Herring, Attorney, SMITH, VON SCHLEICHER & ASSOCIATES, Chicago, IL.
Insurance Coverage Law Center Comment
Other courts have addressed the issue differently. See Critchlow v. First UNUM Life Ins. Co. of America, 378 F.3d 246 (2d Cir. 2004) (death “was not caused by 'partial' strangulation but by the total loss of oxygen for a sustained period”); Padfield v. AIG Life Ins. Co., 290 F.3d 1121, 1127 (9th Cir. 2002) (autoerotic asphyxiation is not an injury).
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].