FATAL COLLISION

Southland Times, Issue 21834, 11 October 1932, Page 7

FATAL COLLISION

CLAIM FOR INSURANCE. LIABILITY DISCLAIMED. (Per United Press Association.) Wellington, October 10. An involved collision which took place about midnight on November 17, 1930, on the Hutt 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, driven by her sister, Anna Findlater, led to extensive litigation, a phase of which is occupying the attention of the Court of Appeal to-day when Marjorie Lestrange Trickett, a daughter of the deceased Wiggs, brought a claim against the Queensland Insurance Co., Ltd., claiming £lOOO as being due to Wiggs’ personal representatives under a comprehensive insurance policy issued by the company over Wiggs’ car. The company disclaimed liability, contending that Wiggs’ car at the time of the acicdent was being driven without lights and that a certain condition in the policy providing 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 at the time of the accident that Wiggs was driving without lights and was on the wrong side of the road and that the exception in the policy relied on by the insurance company applied. Mrs Trickett to-day is appealing from this decision. On the Bench are Justices Herdman, MacGregor and Kennedy.

Mr Cornish for appellant said that so far as his case was concerned it did not matter if the lights of Wiggs’ 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 just immediately prior to the impact Wiggs did 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 insurance companies the purest form of accident.

The court adjourned until to-mor-row.