COURT OF APPEAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21772, 11 October 1932, Page 9

COURT OF APPEAL

INSURANCE COMPANY’S LIABILITY

SEQUEL TO MOTOR COLLISION. iPeb United Peess Association.) WELLINGTON, October 10. A collision which took place about midnight on November 17, 1930, on the Hfltt road, between Ngahauranga and Kaiwarra, between a car driven by Alfred John Wiggs, who was killed in the collision, and another owned by Dr Christina Findlater, and driven by her sister, Miss Anna Findlater, led to extensive litigation, a phase of which occupied the attention of the Court of Appeal today. Marjorie L’Estrangc Trickett, daughter of the deceased Wiggs, brought a claim against the Queensland Insurance Company, JUtd., claiming £IOOO as being due to Wiggs’s personal representatives under a comprehensive insurance policy issued by the company over Wiggs’s qar. The company disclaimed liability, contending that Wiggs’s car at the time of the accident was being driven without lights, and that a certain condition in the policy, providing that if the car was being driven in a damaged or unsafe condition no liability should attach to the company, applied. The Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), before whom the action was tried, found that at the time of the accident Wiggs was driving without lights, and on the wrong side of the road, and that the exception in the policy relied on by the insurance company applied. Mrs Trickett is now appealing- from this decision. On the Bench are Mr Justice Herdman, Mr Justice MacGregor and Mr Justice Kennedy. Mr Cornish, for the appellant, said that so far as his case was concerned it did not matter if the lights of Wiggs's car were out so long as Wiggs did not know of the fact. He submitted that the preponderance of evidence was in support of the contention that if the lights were out immediately prior to the impact Wiggs (jid not know of the fact. If the court held that the exception applied when Wiggs did not know of the lights being out it would remove from the comprehensive cover offered by the insurance companies the purest form of accident. The court adjourned until to-morrow. LAW SOCIETY CHARGES ADJOURNED. (Pee United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, October 10. Charges brought by the New Zealand Law Society against C. S. Leahy, of Auckland, were this morning adjourned till the next sessions of the Court or Appeal.