Four face charges of insurance fraud

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 8

Four face charges of insurance fraud

PA Palmerston North

Four persons appeared in the District Court of Palmerston North yesterday at deposition hearings on charges relating to alleged racehorse insurance frauds totalling $165,750. Jointly charged with causing aggravated cruelty to an animal were Lewis Peter Corrigan, aged 37, his wife, Maureen Anne Corrigan, aged 39, and Reginald William King, aged 31, all self-employed, of Woodville; and Leslie James Judd, aged 39, a Bulls farm manager. Between them, the four also faced a further 15 charges of false pretence, three of using documents to gain pecuniary advantage, and one of illegal possession of a firearm.

Lewis Corrigan, Maureen Corrigan, and King are represented by Mr Mike Lance, of Wanganui, and Judd by Mr Eb Leary, of Auckland.

The Crown prosecutor, Mr David McKegg, said that seven horses under the control of the Corrigans between 1977 and 1984 had suffered compound fractures of the foreleg cannon

bones, which had resulted in their being destroyed. Insurance claims on the horses were then made and in all but one case were paid out. Mr McKegg said the foreleg of one horse, Royal Tidings, had been exhumed and he would produce evidence that the break to the foreleg was consistent with a blow delivered externally. Gordon Graham Allan, a Palmerston North chemist, told the Court he sold the thoroughbred mare to Corrigan for ?1 and at its peak he had valued her at $lOOO.

After her transfer to Corrigan, the horse had been insured for $90,000. The next biggest insurance claim detailed in the charges valued the

thoroughbred filly, Canio, at $40,000, with a cheque for that amount allegedly having been obtained from R. H. Andrews, Ltd.

The director of Auckland Bloodstock Underwriters, Ltd, Bryan Cecil Haggitt, told the Court that after Canio had been destroyed he had ordered three further valuations of the filly. Two were between $3OOO and $5OOO and the third was for $20,000.

Hugh Stewart Alexander, the Bulls veterinary surgeon who destroyed Royal Tidings, said in evidence that in 25 years of practice he could hardly recall any compound fractures of the cannon bone in an adult horse. The case is continuing.