CANVASSER ON TRIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 889, 5 February 1930, Page 11

CANVASSER ON TRIAL

THEFT OF PREMIUMS ALLEGED MAORI BUSHMAN’S POLICY A half-caste Maori bushman’s story of his venture into insurance was related to Mr. Justice Herdman and a jury in the Supreme Court today, when Thomas Leonard Williams, an insurance convasser, was on trial on charges of failing to account for premiums amounting to £37, received over the past four years on behalf of the Temperance and General Insurance Company at Kaikohe. John Baker, a half-caste Maori bushman, said that in 1925, at Williams’s suggestion, he agreed to take up a policy for £SOO, and although he paid the premium of £9 ss, for which he received a receipt, he was not given the policy either by Williams or the company. When asked for the policy, Williams said it had been lost when his house was destroyed by fire. He again paid the premium in 1926, Williams giving him a receipt. In 1928 he paid the £9 5s premium to a—man named Nesbit. whom Williams asserted was his part ner, but the receipt was on a Colonial Mutual Rife form, Williams stating the T. and G. Company had amalgamated with this firm. At the beginning of last year witness received a new policy sent him by the Colonial Mutual Company for £2OO instead of one for £SOO. He was not aware until then he had not been insured during the four years in which he had paid £37 in premiums.

Trevor W. Mastuschka, clerk in the T. and G.‘ Insurance Company, said that Williams was employed by the firm as an agent between 1923 and 1925, and as a sub-agent thereafter. But, said witness, from 1926 accused had no authority to collect money or to give receipts. There was no record in the company’s books that Williams had forwarded any money in 1925, or that he had written a policy for Baker. (Proceeding.)