Yore

This is an action by the widow and children of Peter Yore, deceased, to recover the amount of a policy on his life issued May 10,1886, by the Bankers’ and Merchants’ Mutual Life Insurance Association, and made payable to his “legal heirs.” The defendant is receiver of said association, and is appealing from a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, and from an order denying his motion for a new trial.

The policy in question was issued upon a written application made by Peter Yore, and the action is defended upon the ground that in his application he stated that he was only fifty-six years of age when in fact he was older. At the trial the defendant, in order to prove the falsity of the statement as to age, offered in evidence: 1. An application made by the deceased to the Pacific. Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1868 in which he stated that he was born in 1825; 2. A statement made in 1878 in an application to the Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hew York that he was born in 1829; 3. An entry on the great register of Sierra county made in 1879 showing that he was born in 1822. All this evidence was rejected upon the ground of in competency.

I was at first inclined to regard this…