A WIDOW’S CLAIM.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 13 September 1928, Page 9

A WIDOW’S CLAIM.

DISMISSED ON NON-SUIT POINT JUDGE’S STRONG COMMENT (liy l6lepraoti —Pr«ss Association.) GREYMOUTH, Sept. 13. The Supreme Court yesterday was occupied in hearing a case in which Mary Elizabeth Agatha- Pugh, widow of Amos Henry Pugh, a, sa,windier, who was accidcntallv killed on October 1J last, claimed £IOOO from the Royal Exchaneig Assurance Corporation, a® being clii,? under a life assurance policy of her husband. , , _ . The plaintiff’s case was that Pugh entrusted matters in connection with his life, assurance to Rutile, and Company (the company’s agents) and that his account was sufficiently in credit to have allowed payment therefrom, of till? annual premium amounting to £ls 10s. The defence maintained that the premium had not been paid and that the policv had lapsed. It was stated that Rrnlie and Co. had neglected the assurance business and had failed to make the required monithly returns to the corporation. This morning Mr Justice Adam® dismissed the claim on a nonsuit point, declaring that the evidence given by Ruffle and Saunders, (a clerk) was open to the gravest suspicions. It appeared that, tlie premium was never paid by Pugh and that Rudle and Co. antedated a, receipt and issued it after Pugh’s death. “I. acquit the plaintiff and her advisers of any complicity in this gross, fraud, which if it had been successful, would have polluted the fountain of justice,” concluded his Honour.