Huntly v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co.

RICHARDS, J.

This appeal is from a judgment in the plaintiff’s favor for the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars, for which she sought recovery 'as the beneficiary named in an accident insurance policy issued by the defendant, United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company, to her husband, which policy was dated January 5, 1918, and provided for an indemnity in the amount sued for, payable to plaintiff in the event of the death of the insured “resulting

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directly, and independently of all other causes, from accidental and bodily injury.” The deceased husband of the plaintiff thus insured under said policy was at and for some time prior to the time of his death an auditor in the employ of the Pacific Steamship Company, stationed at berth 160, Wilmington, California. On March 22, 1926, about 7:45 o ’clock A. M., the deceased was found in a kneeling position with his head against a checker’s desk just beside the door of berth 160 above referred to. There were no witnesses to his fall, but when he was discovered some fifteen or twenty minutes later he was still living, though in a semi-conscious condition, and was feebly but vainly attempting to rise. His head at the base of his forehead was resting upon the edge of the checker’s bench when he was found and he appeared to have sustained a deep wound at the point of contact where the frontal bone of the skull joins the nasal bone, and which wound had apparently been caused by his violent fall against the edge of such bench a short while before he was found. He had also an abrasion across his nose, his right knee was skinned, and there were scratches upon the back of his right hand. Within some thirty minutes after he was discovered in his above-described condition he died. The foregoing facts, and certain others to be adverted to, were presented by the plaintiff in evidence at the trial. The defendant in its pleadings and in the evidence educed in support thereof at the trial attempted to show that the decedent prior to his aforesaid- injuries had been afflicted with a pronounced and well-defined condition known as “angina pectoris” and that the arteries of the deceased upon the postmortem examination showed an advanced condition of calcification known as “arterio sclerosis.” The defendant also introduced certain evidence showing that the deceased, within the period of a week or so prior to his final and fatal injuries, had, upon two occasions, been found lying on the streets of Wilmington in an unconscious condition and had been given emergency treatment for what was diagnosed at the time as apoplexy or heart trouble, and that for some period prior to these attacks he had been receiving treatment from a physician for symptoms indicating the existence of heart trouble. Predicated upon this evidence and upon what the autopsies had disclosed, the defendant presented evidence of certain expert physicians who testified