James A. Byrne federal courthouse in Philadelphia. (Photo: Paul D'Annunzio/ALM)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has affirmed a ruling that an insurance company is not obligated to pay $3.5 million from two life insurance policies in the name of a Time Warner lawyer who committed suicide.

Christine Arena ended her life at age 41 at her family's home in Upper Montclair. Her husband, Gianfranco Arena, sued the RiverSource Life Insurance Co., claiming its policy exclusions for suicide should not apply because Christine Arena was taking psychotropic medications at the time of death that left her unable to understand the consequences of her actions or to form the requisite intent to kill herself.

But the Third Circuit said the mere details of her death were sufficient circumstantial evidence to show that she knew her actions would end her life. The appeals court, acknowledging the assertion of a plaintiff's expert that Christine Arena's medications may have caused her to act impulsively and obfuscated her ability to form the requisite intent, said that "acting on an irresistible impulse is different than having no intent or no comprehension of the actions one is taking."

Christine Arena graduated from Fordham Law School in 1999, then worked for six years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York before joining Time Warner. Lawyers from Cravath represented her family in the insurance dispute.

Christine Arena and her husband were experiencing financial difficulties at the time of her death. They owed $60,000 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, and the sale of their existing home had fallen through after they already had purchased a new one for $1.3 million.

After the sale fell through, she began seeing a psychiatrist, Lester Noah Shaw. The doctor found she did not fit the criteria for clinical depression and was at a low risk of suicide, but he prescribed her Clonazepam and Sertraline, the generic versions of Klonopin and Zoloft. Later, the doctor increased her dose for both medications and then added a prescription for another antidepressant, Trazodone.

Christine Arena was rushed to a hospital after hanging herself in April 2015 and died nine days later. The police listed the incident as a suicide attempt and the medical examiner listed the manner of death as suicide.

U.S. District Judge Jose Linares dismissed the underlying lawsuit in December 2018. On appeal, Third Circuit Judges Michael Chagares, Kent Jordan and L. Felipe Restrepo acknowledge Gianfranco Arena's assertion that a policy exclusion for suicide only applies if a decedent intended to cause his or her death.

But the actions leading up to Christine Arena's death are sufficient to establish "not only that Arena had awareness that those actions would end her life but also that she intended to do so," Jordan wrote for the court. RiverSource was not required to produce direct evidence in the form of a suicide note or contemporaneous expression of her intentions.

Gianfranco Arena argued that his wife's mental state was akin to a situation described in Johnson v. Metropolitan Life Insurance, a 1968 Third Circuit case establishing that killing oneself does not always include the element of intent. He claimed that his wife's mental disorder was so extreme, she had no comprehension of what she was doing. He cited testimony from family and friends that she would never end her own life if she had been thinking clearly. But the Third Circuit judges said that evidence of her mental state being inconsistent with suicide, as well as her moral aversion to suicide, are not legally material. That evidence "does not undermine the undisputed facts which can only be explained as an effort to kill herself," the panel said.

Kevin Orsini and Rory Leraris of Cravath, who represented Gianfranco Arena, did not respond to requests for comment about the ruling. Jay Blumenkopf  and Sara Frey of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani represented RiverSource. Blumenkopf declined to comment on the ruling.