EUGENE, Ore. (AP) -- The wife of a Eugene man who died in a kitchen accident is suing his life insurance company. Michele Vinson says the company is refusing to pay because David Vinson had been drinking that day.
She is seeking $1.3 million from Hartford Life and Accident Insurance Co. Her husband was home alone last April 12 when he apparently dropped a domed glass cake cover. It shattered, a sharp edge severed a main artery in his left foot and the 68-year-old man bled to death.
The Oregon medical examiner's office listed a single cause of death: a sharp force foot injury that caused Vinson to bleed out.
Michele Vinson was stunned when the insurance company denied her claim to $386,000 from her husband's life insurance policy and a related benefit to cover school expenses for their 19-year-old daughter, Danielle, who is in college. She is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
In denying the family's claim, Hartford said the autopsy also indicated Vinson had a blood alcohol level above .08 percent. The insurance company wrote that is the level at which a driver has committed the offense of driving under the influence under Oregon law.
Therefore, his death did not result from bodily injury resulting directly and independently of all other causes from an accident, as his policy required, Hartford said. The company also cited a policy exclusion for any injury sustained while the Covered Person is legally intoxicated from the use of alcohol.
Hartford spokesman David Potter says the company doesn't comment on litigation. But he notes that accidental death policies often include exclusions, including exclusions related to intoxication.
In Michele and Danielle Vinson's lawsuit, their lawyer William Gary acknowledged that acute alcohol intoxication was listed as a significant condition at the time of David Vinson's death, along with cardiovascular disease and emphysema. But none of those conditions were listed as causal factors in his death.
Gary also challenged Hartford's assertion that Oregon's driving under the influence blood alcohol standard equates to legal intoxication. Further, he said, no Oregon law states it is unlawful to be intoxicated, by any definition, in the privacy of one's home. "It's like they're personally attacking David," Michele Vinson told The Register-Guard this week. "This was an accident, and he wasn't doing anything that should cause them to deny (his death benefit.)
"He was a very private man. It's wrong that we should have to do all this out in public in order to make them give us what he paid for."
