The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-10 00:00:00

LIVERPOOL SUMMER ASSIZES.

NISI PRIUS COURT..-TUESDAY.
ECCLES AND ANOTHER V. HARPER.

This was an action brought by Thomas and Richard
Eccles, of Lower Darwen, near Blackburn, against the
defendant, Samuel Harper, to recover the amount of a
policy of insurance for £l2OO, effected on 220 bales of
cotton on board the ship Caledonia, on her voyage from
Savannah to Liverpool. .The declaration stated the total
loss of that vessel; and the defendant pleaded that the
policy had been obtained under circumstances of fraud
and misrepresentation. It appeared that the plaintiffs
had long been in the habit of ordering cotton from the
house of Andrew Lowe and Co. of Savannah—a respec-
table firm connected with the house of Isaac Lowe, and
Co., of Liverpool ; and they had been ordering cotton
from that house a considerable time. Savannah was a
port in South Carolina, whence cotton was sent in large
quantities to Liverpool ; and the well-known rates of in-
surance for that voyage varied; from 12s. 6d. to 15s. The
average length of the voyage was twenty-five, thirty, and
thirty-five days ; and at the time the policy was effected
in the present instance, the ships were performing the
voyage in the ordinary time. The order for the insurance
by the Caledonia was given on the Ist of May, to Cunliffe
and Co., and through them to Cunard and Co. ; it arrived
in London on the 2d, about three o'clock p.m., and the
order was a simple one to insure £l2OO on 200 bales of
cotton on board the Caledonia for the plaintiffs, stating
nothing more than that the ship was coming in the ordi-
nary way with the cotton. Under these circumstances
the policy was effected at Lloyd's, at the customary pre-
mium of 12s. 6d. ; and upon the 2d of May this insurance
was effected as if it had been on a ship likely to leave Sa-
vannah a fortnight or a week before, when the underwriter
discovered in the early part of the month of June, that
the vessel he had insured on the 2d of May had sailed
from Savannah on the 17th of March, being a period of
44 days after the time she had sailed, and ten days beyond
the ordinary risk of the voyage ; he instantly made appli-
cation to the brokers as to why they should have sought
to effect an insurance under the circumstances mentioned.

Several witnesses having been examined for the defen-
dant,
Mr. KNOWLES contended that the average period of
the voyages from Savannah to Liverpool was understated,
and that a ship, under the circumstances of the Caledonia,
would probably occupy somewhere about forty days on
the voyage. He observed that if seven guineas had been
asked for effecting the policy, it would have been willingly
paid, and that the plaintiffs were wholly ignorant of the
time the vessel sailed.
The jury retired, and, after an absence from court of
several hours, returned a verdict for the plaintiff, damages
£3OO.

HARGREAVES V. PARSONS.
This was a t.pecial jury case, in which the plaintiff,
George Hargreaves, was a commission merchant in Li-
verpool, and the defendant was George Parsons, a share-
broker, also of this town ; and the object of the action
was to recover a sum of between £4OO and £5OO for an
alleged breach of a contract which the defendant entered
into with the plaintiff in November last. It appeared
that in the course of last year a gentleman, named Parker,
who speculates in foreign railway shares to a considerable
extent, entered into some contract with the defendant,
and out of that contract had arisen a contract with the
plaintiff and the defendant, which had been the cause of
this action coming into court.
After the case had been gone into at some length, a
verdict was returned for the plaintiff for £437 10s., sub-
ject to a motion for a nonsuit.