Definition
In law, "accidental" describes an event or result that is unforeseen, unexpected, and not brought about through deliberate agency. The term operates across several legal contexts, with its meaning shaped by the subject matter — most prominently in insurance law, tort law, and workers' compensation.
1. Insurance law. An occurrence is accidental when it is not the natural and probable consequence of an intentional act by the insured. Courts have consistently applied the ordinary, popular sense: happening by chance; unexpectedly taking place; not according to the usual course of things. Under this framing, even violent or externally-caused deaths — including murder, lynching, or death during a robbery — have been held to be "accidental" from the perspective of the insured who did not expect or intend the result.
2. Personal injury and tort law. An injury is accidental when it is unforeseen and unexpected, not brought about through any agency acting designedly, and amounts to a casualty or mishap not intended to befall the person. The absence of foresight on the part of the actor is central: an intentional act that produces an unintended injury may still be treated as accidental with respect to the injury, though not with respect to the act.
3. General legal usage. Beyond insurance and tort, "accidental" modifies other legal concepts — accidental mistake, accidental killing, accidental disclosure — carrying the consistent core meaning of unintended and unforeseeable.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Happening by chance; fortuitous; occurring without design or intent.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; casual; fortuitous. Also: nonessential; incidental; not necessarily belonging to a thing.
The common and legal meanings are close but diverge at the edges. Ordinary usage treats "accidental" as largely synonymous with "unintentional." Legal usage — especially in insurance — goes further, asking not merely whether an act was unintentional but whether the result was unexpected and unforeseen from the standpoint of the insured. This produces counterintuitive outcomes: a homicide can be an "accident" under a policy, while a self-inflicted injury intended only to produce a minor result may not qualify if serious harm was the natural and probable consequence.
Common Confusion
The most consequential distinction in insurance litigation is between accidental means and accidental result. Some policies historically required that the means producing the injury be accidental — not merely the result. Under this narrower standard, a deliberate act (e.g., intentionally diving into water) that produces an unintended injury (e.g., a broken neck) would not qualify because the means — the dive — was voluntary. A policy covering accidental results, by contrast, would cover the injury regardless of whether the act was intentional. Many jurisdictions have collapsed this distinction, treating the two standards as equivalent, but older policies and older cases often turn on which standard applies. Researchers encountering policy language from before the mid-twentieth century should flag this issue immediately.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "accidental" is one of the most litigated terms in insurance law, and its meaning has shifted considerably depending on era, jurisdiction, and policy language. Several research traps follow from this.
First, the accidental means/accidental result distinction was live and contested throughout the early-to-mid twentieth century. Cases from that period may apply a more restrictive standard than modern law recognizes. Do not assume a pre-1960 holding on "accidental" maps cleanly onto modern doctrine without checking whether the policy used means or result language.
Second, Bouvier's entries reflect a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century understanding shaped heavily by life and accident insurance litigation. The examples given — death by assassination, death by mob — illustrate courts' willingness to extend coverage even in violent circumstances, but the underlying doctrinal rationale (unexpected from the insured's standpoint) is still operative today.
Third, the term appears in workers' compensation statutes — often in the phrase "accidental injury" or "arising out of an accidental cause" — where its meaning is again jurisdiction-specific and has evolved through decades of administrative and appellate decisions. Workers' compensation usage does not translate automatically to insurance usage, or vice versa.
Fourth, "accidental" frequently appears as a modifier in criminal law (accidental killing, accidental discharge) where it bears on mens rea and the availability of defenses. That usage is analytically separate from the insurance and tort contexts and should not be conflated with them.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's treats "accidental" by importing the ordinary popular meaning — "happening by chance; unexpectedly taking place; not according to the usual course of things" — and then applies it through case illustration. The two entries work together: the first addresses death-insurance contexts and extends "accidental" to violent deaths (assassination, mob hanging); the second addresses personal injury and centers on whether the occurrence was unforeseen, unexpected, and without design.
Bouvier's approach reflects the dominant interpretive move of the era: anchoring legal meaning to common meaning, then expanding it through judicial construction to cover results that a lay reader might not immediately classify as "accidents." The practical effect was to protect insureds broadly against unexpected death or injury, regardless of the agency producing it — provided the insured did not intend the result.
What Bouvier's does not address is the internal fault line that would preoccupy courts for much of the twentieth century: whether the policy's coverage requirement attaches to the means, the result, or both. That debate developed after the period Bouvier's primarily reflects, and researchers relying solely on the historical dictionaries will find the distinction absent.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) — Accidental Means vs. Accidental Result, Law Mind Insurance Law Encyclopedia