Newton

These are appeals from judgments of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Northern Division. The suit was commenced by the plaintiffs, appellants here, in the Superior Court in Siskiyou County, California. On valid grounds of diversity of citizenship and sufficiency of the amount involved, the suit was removed to the United States District Court.

The action was for damages for alleged fraud, concealment and misrepresentation by agents of the defendant insurance companies, in the issuance of certain life insurance and annuity policies and contracts to the plaintiffs. Each of the defendant companies, with leave of the District Court, filed a third-party complaint against Lloyd Steadman and Wayne W. Wentner making them third-party defendants and claiming that, if judgment should be rendered for the plaintiffs against the defendants in the original action, or any of them, then Steadman and Wentner, the third-party defendants, should be held liable to such *499 original defendants for the amount of such judgments.

By the consent of all parties, the action came on for the trial of one separate issue, before the court, sitting without a jury. That…