Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
THE INSURANCE Company of the West Indies (ICWI) won an appeal recently against a widow who sought to claim damages it for injuries she sustained in a 1987 motor vehicle accident.
The Court of Appeal rejected arguments by lawyers representing the claimant Waltraud East, that a previous ruling by the trial judge was in error.
ARGUMENTS
Her lawyers argued that the judge misinterpreted section 18 (1) of the Motor Vehicle Insurance (Third Party Risks) Act (this ground was later abandoned at the hearing of the Appeal). They also argued that the trial judge wrongly received and admitted oral evidence from two employees attached to the insurance company who oversaw claims and the company's policy schedules.
Unconvinced by the appellant's arguments, the law lords ordered the claim dismissed and costs of the appeal to ICWI be taxed if not agreed. ICWI was represented by Christopher Kelman, Attorney-at-Law, of the law firm Myers, Fletcher & Gordon.
The facts are that in 1987 while travelling with her husband in a motor car along the Moneague main Road in St. Ann, the car collided with a Truck coming in the opposite direction. Mrs. East sustained serious injury and her husband was killed. The truck driver's negligence was blamed for the collision. Motor Owners Mutual Insurance (MOM) were the insurers of the truck. MOM ceased business in 1988 after East had filed a suit in the Supreme Court. In 2000 she was awarded damages in the sum of $20,784,964.51 against the owner and driver of the motor truck.
MOM's portfolio was absorbed by ICWI in 1988.
In 2002, lawyers representing East sued ICWI, claiming that it was responsible to pay MOM' s debt to their client including interest and costs.
PAYMENTS TO POLICY
ICWI had previously paid the policy limit of $750, 000 to East in March 2001, but East sued for the balance of the debt. She lost because the trial judge found that ICWI had satisfactorily proven that it had a policy schedule limit of $750, 000 for any one person sustaining injury in an accident even though by the time of the trial in January 2004, the policy schedule was lost. The trial judge at the trial admitted oral evidence of the contents of the policy schedule from the two employees of ICWI.
The appellant responded to the ruling by appealing the Supreme Court's decision, claiming that the trial judge misinterpreted the law when she received and admitted evidence from employees who said the company's policy limit was $750,000 at the time of the accident.
