Murray v. Supreme Lodge of New England Order of Prot.

• Decision Date: 06 June 1902
• Citation: 74 Conn. 715,52 A. 722
• Parties: MURRAY et al. v. SUPREME LODGE OF NEW ENGLAND ORDER OF PROTECTION.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

52 A. 722

74 Conn. 715

MURRAY et al.

v. SUPREME LODGE OF NEW ENGLAND ORDER OF PROTECTION.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

June 6, 1902.

Appeal from superior court, New Haven county; Alberto T. Roraback, Judge.

Action by Charlotte Murray and others against the Supreme Lodge of New England Order of Protection. From a judgment for plaintiffs, defendant appeals. Reversed.

William H. Ely and Albert H. Barclay, fur appellant.

Charles S. Hamilton, for appellees.

TORRANCE, C. J. The certificate sued upon was issued by the defendant to Ellen T. Murray in May, 1898. In it the defendant agreed, among other things, that Ellen T. Murray should be entitled "to participate in the relief and benefit fund of the order to the amount of one thousand dollars," which sum at her death the defendant in said certificate agreed to pay to the plaintiffs, daughters of Ellen T. Murray. This agreement to pay was made upon certain express conditions, one of which was that statements made by Ellen T. Murray in her application for membership were true. On the trial it was conceded that no person over 50 years of age could lawfully become a benefit member of the defendant society; and the main defense was that Ellen T. Murray, when she joined the defendant society, in May, 1898, was over 50 years old, and that she falsely stated the date of her birth in her application as of March 4, 1849. when she knew that it was of a much earlier date. The parties were at issue upon this question as to the age of said Ellen T. Murray, and as to whether her statement of the date of her birth in her application for membership was true. In proof of the age of Ellen T. Murray at the time of her application for membership in the defendant society, the defendant offered in evidence certified copies of the following documents from the records of the registrar of vital statistics of New Haven: (1) The application made by Patrick Murray, the prospective husband of said Ellen, in July, 1865, to the registrar, for a marriage license between himself and Ellen; (2) the license issued upon said application; (3) the certificate of the celebrant of the marriage of said parties, indorsed on said certificate of license. In the application for the license the age of Ellen was stated to be 22 years. In the other writings her age was not stated. The plaintiffs objected to the admission of the application for license "as irrelevant, immaterial, incompetent, and hearsay," and the court excluded it, but ruled that the other writings were admissible. The defendant also, for the purpose of proving the age of Ellen when she became a member of the society, offered in evidence the record of said marriage in the books of the registrar, as made up from the documents above mentioned, in which record the age of Ellen was stated to be 22 years. To this the plaintiffs objected, "as it appeared from the cross-examination of the registrar that the record contained, at most, nothing more than" what was contained in the aforesaid documents, and "that so far as the originals were admissible the same were already in evidence, and that so far as the originals were not admissible" the record of them would not be admissible. The court sustained the objection. For a like purpose the defendant offered in evidence duly certified copies from the registrar's records of returns of births made to him of children born to said Ellen, by the physicians who attended her, as required by law, in which her age at the time of such birth was stated. This evidence, also, the court, on objection of the plaintiffs, excluded. Whether these several rulings were correct or not is the principal question in the case.

From a very early period our law has provided for the record of births, deaths, and marriages in some way by some public official. The first act of this kind seems to have been passed in 1004 (Revision 1808, p. 652, note 1), and ever since that time our statute book has contained provisions, more or less specific, looking to the making and preservation of such records. During the period covered by the documents offered in evidence in the present case, the duty to make and preserve such records was imposed upon a public official called a "registrar," elected by the municipality, and sworn to faithfully perform the duties of his office. One of his duties was to "ascertain, as...