“INSURANCE TRAPS”

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 September 1927, Page 11

“INSURANCE TRAPS”

JUDGE’S STRONG COMMENT. (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 23. A claim for £4OO insurance on an Armstrong-Siddeley motor-car, burned on the road over Mount Messenger last May, was made by Evelyn Mulliner against the North British and Mercantile Iri'surance Company in the Supreme Court. The car was bought in February, 1925, for £465, and in 1926 was bought by J. L. Scott, who took out a policy with the defendant companv. Scott sold the car to plaintiff in the following September, and the accident occurred when plaintiff and Mr. and Mrs. Scott were touring last May. Scott said the clutch of the car began to slip. Scott got out to repair it, and the car went over a slight bank, caught fire, and was burned. The Insurance Company refused to pay on the ground of breaches of conditions of the policy. Mr. Finlay asked for a non-suit on the ground that there were at least two mis-statements of fact in the insurance proposal, which voided the policy. Scott had stated in the proposal he had never had a previous accident with a car, but he now said he had had an accident with a Ford Se. dan. Mr. Justice Stringer said that if that sort of objection were to be raised, it was making motor-car insurances a trap. He was surprised that such an objection should be taken. Mr. Finlay said the principal objection was that the price was represented as £450. His Honour declined to grant a nonsuit, saying the question regarding previous accidents referred specifically to accidents followed by a claim on an insurance company. In his opinion £275 was a fair and reasonable estimate of the value of the car at the time of its destruction, and he gave judgment for £275, with costs as per scale. As there was at least one point about which he had some doubt he would give his opinion in writing with a view to the case being stated for appeal. “I should like to give the Court of Appeal an opportunity of expressing an opinion as to the morality of these contracts of insurance with these conditions and clauses, which, to my mind, present a series of traps to the unwary insurers.” He said that an appeal might be a means of bringing about legislation which, he thought very desirable, in order that people might know where they were when they entered upon these contracts. He would throw the onus upon the defendant Company if it chose to take the matter to the higher court. Commenting upon another aspect of the case, His Honor said that insurance companies were no doubt often swindled by insurers, but it was, to say the least of it, inadvisable to introduce that element in a case unless a company had such a specific knowledge as would justify it in bringing a definite charge. Innuendo in these matters was very undesirable.