
    McKinley v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
    (City Court of Brooklyn—General Term,
    November, 1893.)
    In an action on a policy of life insurance plaintiff testified that at the solicitation of defendant’s agent she made a verbal application for a policy upon her husband’s life. Defendant gave, evidence to establish that plaintiff made or authorized a written application for the policy, and warranted the truth of the statements therein. A statement therein that her husband was never sick was claimed by defendant to be false in that, at the time, her husband had syphilis, and had been suffering with it long prior thereto. Held, that the evidence Justified a verdict that no written application had been made.
    On the trial the court excluded an authenticated copy of the attending physician’s certificate, filed with the board of health, in which it was certified that plaintiff’s husband was a married man and had died of syphilis of four years’ duration. Defendant claimed that the certificate should have been admitted as presumptive evidence of the truth of its recitals by virtue of Laws 1882, chapter 410, section 621. The court charged that if such written application was made plaintiff could not recover if at the time her husband had or had had syphilis. Held, that the certificate was properly excluded; the proper rational construction of said section is that an authenticated copy of the records of boards of health is admissible when the records themselves are relevant and admissible according to the existing rules of evidence, and the admission of the certificate would have been a plain violation of the general rule of the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence.
    Appeal from judgment in plaintiff’s favor and from an order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial.
    
      J. Stuart Ross, for plaintiff (respondent).
    
      Arnoux, Ritch & Woodford, for defendant (appellant).
   Van Wyck, J.

For the foregoing reasons we think the judgment and order should be affirmed, with costs.

Clement, Ch. J., concurs.

Judgment and order affirmed.  