The question presented is whether the insured, Walter F. Hamilton, was dead or dodging prior to the time that his life insurance policies would have lapsed were he then alive. The jury found that he died on the 29th day of December, 1928, the day after the night on which he packed his belongings and set forth either into eternity or obscurity. According to the proof, naught has been heard of him since that date. As in many other cases of missing persons, he had insurance in a substantial sum for one in his financial and social position. Basing their right to recover upon the common-law rule that unexplained absence of a person from his last or usual place of residence without having been heard from for a period of more than seven years raises a presumption of his death, the wife, beneficiary in the policies, and the Oakland Corporation, a successor in right to a creditor-assignee of a sufficient amount of the policies to pay a loan made by the absentee, brought suit. They jury found for the wife. The Court found against the corporate plaintiff. Appeals and cross-appeals resulted.
