Eraldi

There was bad blood between David J. Eraldi .and Henry Lourdeaux. On the night of July 23, 1936, they engaged in mortal combat, and Eraldi was shot to death by Lourdeaux.

Plaintiff, mother of the deceased, as beneficiary in a policy of insurance issued by defendant company to deceased, sues for the amount alleged to be due under the terms of the policy. The policy provides that payment will be made in the ‘event of the death.of the insured “effected directly and independently of all other causes through external, violent and accidental means.” Admittedly death was caused by external and violent means, but the difficult question presented for decision is whether, under the facts and the law, death was caused by “accidental means.”

Eraldi and Lourdeaux were residents of the town of Sonoma, the former conducting a haberdashery and the latter an electrical business. The shooting occurred about nine o’clock at night on the main street of the town in front of Eraldi’s haberdashery. The facts of the tragedy are related by three eyewitnesses, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Hansen and Raymond Grant Roberts, a youth sixteen years of age.

Mr. Hansen is an employee of the State Highway Department, and…