CASE ON APPEAL

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21220, 17 September 1940, Page 4

CASE ON APPEAL

BAKERS INSURANCE PRESUMPTION OF DEATH COURT RESERVES DECISION (By Telegraph.—Press Association) WELLINGTON, Tuesday The hearing of the case Australian Mutual Provident Society v. the Public Trustee was continued in the Court of Appeal today. The case concerns the payment of the life insurance of William Alfred Joseph Suiter Montgomery, a baker, who disappeared while on his daily round delivering bread at Ngatea, near Thames, on February 3, 1936, and whose van was found near the wharf on the Piako River The appeal is from the decision of Mr Justice Johnston in June granting the Public Trustee, as holder of a will, leave to swear death. The application was at the time opposed by the A.M.P. Society, the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance and the State Fire Office, in which Montgomery’s life was insured for a total of £3OOO. Mr Byrne, of the Public Trust Office, arguing the case for respondent, contended that the law as to the effect of a grant of probate made pursuant to an order giving leave to swear death was the same in New Zealand as in England, and the Court should apply the same test in determining whether the facts justified an order to swear death. Counsel contended that the circumstances surrounding Montgomery’s disappearance were such as to make death the only reasonable inference. The only other explanation was that Montgomery voluntarily abandoned his wife and family. Such abandonment would be a wrongful act on Montgomery’s part and would not lightly be presumed by the Court. The Court reserved decision.