A very singular action against insurance companies has just been heard at Lyons. The plaintiffs were the heirs of M. Hei Martin, a journalist, and they sought to recover 30,000 fr., the amount of policies issued to him by three The deceased was found hanging by a cord from " ring fixed in the wall of his bedroom. The cord was attached to a dog-collar which Martin had round his neck, and he was quite dead. The insurance companies regarded the case as a suicide, which, according to the term of the policy, would have relieved them from liability. M. Martin's heirs, however, argued that his dosth was accidental. He had been pos-served for years, they said, by the idea of writing a book containing s description of the sensations of a man who had been hanged, and he must have met with his death in the course of an experiment to ascertain for himself what these sensations were. It was proved that the deceased had no motive for suicide and that he had often spoken of it as cowardice. The Court postponed judgment for a week.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.