Insurance Money Research Articles

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism.

Colorful and outrageous, influential yet despicable, J. Frank Norris was a preacher, newspaper publisher, political activist, and all-around subject of controversy. One of the most despised men in traditional Southern Baptist circles, he was also the man most responsible for bringing hard-edged fundamentalism to the South. The life of this religious rapscallion makes 1990s televangelists seem like naughty toddlers. In God's Rascal, Barry Hankins traces Norris, the Texas Cyclone, from his boyhood in small-town Texas to his death in 1952. Along the way Norris pastored two of the largest churches in America simultaneously, one in Fort Worth and the other in Detroit, together comprising 25,000 members. Among other escapades, he once shot and killed a man in his church office and was accused of burning down his own church for insurance money. Despite such scandals, Norris was a man of considerable public influence who traveled the world, corresponded with congressmen, and attended the inauguration of Herbert Hoover at the president-elect's invitation. Throughout his preaching career he battled anyone and everyone he saw as part of the leftist conspiracy to foist liberalism and immorality on America. His list of evils included evolution, liquor, Catholicism, communism, and organized labor. Hated by moderate Southern Baptist leaders, Norris nevertheless had a larger following than any other American preacher of his time. His thousands of constituents saw him as their spokesman against big government and bigger religion. While recounting Norris's life, Hankins discusses the early history of fundamentalism as well as the social and cultural battles Americans fought during the first half of thetwentieth century. This account reveals a remarkable man who helped shape the current American religious landscape while outdoing the likes of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker as God's rascal.

Shipping and scuttling: Criminogenesis in marine insurance

Among the instances of maritime fraud, the scuttling of ships, the deliberate sinking of a ship in order to collect the insurance money, stands out. It has been suggested that marine transport is prone to infiltration by organized crime groups. These are suggestions that have never been substantiated, but they could point towards a criminogenic market-structure of the (marine) insurance industry. The Dutch marine insurance-industry has a reputation to lose. The insuring of ships requires skill, professionalism and money, but the practice of marine insurance has hardly changed since the Dutch Golden Age. Drawing upon the results of two years of fieldwork in the Dutch marine insurance industry, it will be argued that the scuttling of ships is interlinked and intertwined with the practice of marine insurance and the way the marine insurance industry is commercially and legally organized. An analysis of the opportunity-for-fraud-structure of the (Dutch) marine insurance market will be made.

From "Walks to the Paradise Garden"

I spent lot of time from 1984 till 1991 traipsing about Dear Old Dixie with the photographers Roger Manley and Guy Mendes. Our mission was to find, as Guy put it, out people way out We did just that, and fought lot of kudzu, ate lot of terrible barbecue, and incurred the displeasure of numerous bubbas who did not like the way we dressed or talked. (Bubbas would be the objects of Christian pity, if they weren't such genuinely mean assholes.) The result was Walks to the Paradise Garden, subtitled Outsiders in the South. Pieces of the book have appeared in Conjunctions (issues 12 and 21), ARTVU: Contemporary Southern Visual Arts (Spring 1991), and Modern Painters (London: Summer 1996). - J.W. If you go way down into southeast South Carolina, to the Springtown Community, in the environs of town called Walterboro, you might happen across rural route once lived on by an aged black man known as Jolly Joshua Samuel (1895-1984). He sounds wonderful. He founded an entity called the Young People World Fare Organization. The centerpiece of this entity was to be Can City. By the time Roger Manley and I got there in 1985 it had, essentially, disappeared. However, Roger had seen it once before the tornado wiped it out. Let's first devote few words to Southeast South Carolina. If, by some weird chance, you ever are unfortunate enough to venture off 1-95, you will see horrid part of the world, as blasted as Namibia must be. Nearly all the old motels and commercial buildings have been torched for insurance money. Even Eastern Kentucky doesn't look so wretched. It is black country and these people appear to have as much chance in the world as the Iraqis in our recent high-tech adventure in ivy-league butt-kicking. Enter this visionary gentleman, J. J. Samuel. He had some divine notion that by collecting three cents from this one and 85 cents from that one, he could establish tiny bit of social justice, a beginning for colored leadership all around the world. He aimed to raise $150,000 to help abjectly poor people, young people, destitute farmers, very sick people. It didn't happen because there was no way it could happen. Still, he told Tom Stanley, the printer, how the inspiration came: I had dream in 1942. I dreamt that there was man coming in the air driving something sideways. And I said that thing's gonna land right here. And it went right between the house and the tree there. And there was man with hat on just like this here. I said good morning. He said good morning. I said there's something I've got to ask you. I don't believe I ever saw something like that coming flying sideways in the air. He said no you didn't, Josh. I said how'd you know my name. He said now, I know all about you. I was sent to you, he said. And this is barn load of goods sent to you from way off to give to the poor and needy, but don't you sell thing. So I stood there and didn't say thing, and then I woke up and I didn't have anything. Many years later he began to build Can City. It was constructed from thousands of quart-sized oil cans he collected from nearby truck stop. It ran for about 200 yards along the side of the highway across from the house of Mr. Samuel. In its heyday it was enclosed by wall of cans standing eight feet high. There was central structure intended to be barbecue stand, the place for social gatherings. According to what Jolly Joshua Samuel told Tom Stanley, on either side of the central structure there were decorative patterns of oil cans emerging from the soil, as well as bunting in primary colors hung in the pine trees along the road. Eventually he ran out of cans, so he decided to plant tin-can farm with can trees and can crops all in cultivated rows covering several acres. Mr. Samuel confided to Roger, Man, that field really produces! He was under the illusion that he was growing them, but, if so, it was only by indirect means. …

The Old Settler is Far from Settled

The Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Washington, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, and fifth play presented as part of its Silver Anniversary was John Henry Redwood's The Old Settler, which previewed on October 25,1997, and ran between October 29 and November 22. Ably directed by Claude Purdy, production featured Tony Award winner Mary Alice in title role as Elizabeth Borny, with Obie Award winner Barbara Montgomery in supporting role of Quilly McGrath. Under directorial stewardship of Walter Dallas, play premiered last February at Mc Carter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. The historical and geographical location of play is Harlem in Spring of 1943. The Borny-McGrath sisters live together in a comfortable apartment during Harlem's hey-day. Act One opens with two sisters returning home from a funeral. We learn that Elizabeth, on recommendation of her pastor, has rented a room in apartment she shares with her sister to a young country newly transplanted from South Carolina. Quilly worries that Elizabeth has made a hasty decision, despite minister's recommendation, because, knows, boy could be a rapist. But when Husband Witherspoon, played by Evan Dexter Parke, arrives to move into his room audience is greeted with a young searching for his long lost love, Lou Bessie Preston, who has been living in Harlem for several years. While Husband combs streets of Harlem in search of Lou Bessie, audience is presented with snapshots of Harlem through conversations of two sisters, who discuss church, women's group of which Quilly is a member (Ladies Of The Golden Scepter), and gossip in church about Elizabeth, old settler (i.e., a single woman over fifty) renting a room to a young man. When Lou Bessie (played by Gwen Mulamba) finds out that Husband is in Harlem and is trying to find her, she hastens to Elizabeth's apartment. Lou Bessie makes a grand entrance which is enhanced by loud and provocative style of her apparel, designed by Michael Alan Stein. While waiting for Husband, Lou Bessie and Elizabeth converse, and we learn that Lou Bessie imagines her relationship with Husband largely in monetary terms: She dreams of opening a beauty salon with insurance money Husband inherited from recent death of his mother. Their conversation immediately establishes good woman/bad girl dichotomy in scenes where, in spirit of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Elizabeth and Lou Bessie battle for soul of Husband. A series of interesting moments and vignettes follows: Elizabeth and Quilly discuss a group of Blacks from their church who encounter blatant acts of racism while traveling by train to South; Quilly, concerned that her sister has a romantic interest in Husband, discourages her from getting involved with such a young man and thereby escalates tension between two sisters which will erupt in second act; Husband explains to Quilly why he chooses not to take up his country's patriotic call to arms against Germans and Japanese; confronted with fact that Lou Bessie has been transformed by her experiences in Harlem and South Carolina, Husband demonstrates that he is not equipped emotionally or intellectually to deal with person she has become; and tension between Lou Bessie and Elizabeth escalates in a battle for Husband's heart and soul. The play has several problems. One is that central trope of the old settler seems mired in confusion of play's identity, which takes on elements of different genres--Chittlin circuit melodrama, domestic realism--and different theatrical works--e.g., Emily Mann's Having Our Say and Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky. The audience is not lead to a full understanding of, or an appreciation for, cultural and social significance of the old settler to ethos of Black community (see Evelyn Higginbotham's Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in Black Church, 1880-1920). …

Health dominates Australia's election campaign

Australia's prime minister, Paul Keating, last week unveiled his health policy, offering families Medicare rebates for private health insurance and extra money to cover medical treatment for children. The future of Medicare has emerged as a central issue in the federal election campaign as Labor seeks another term after 13 years in power. Mr Keating, who goes to the country on 2 March, …

Malice: The New American Hero

Malice: The New American Hero M. Daphne Kutzer Malice, Directed by Harold Becker. Screenplay by Aaron Sorking and Scott Frank. Castlerock, 1993. The latest contender in the Woman as Evil Bitch Film Sweepstakes is Harold Becker’s Malice. The film is less interesting for its portrayal of the Bitch, Tracy (Nicole Kidman), than for its view of what makes a Real American Man. The character of Tracy—a beautiful fraud who pretends to love children and her husband while plotting with handsome Dr. Jed Hill (Alec Baldwin) to make herself sterile and thereby collect insurance money—doesn’t add much to the string of recent screen villainesses in Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Basic Instinct, and others. All share the central quality of denying their feminine and motherly sides and/or exploiting their sexuality to ensnare hapless men. However, the development of the character of Tracy’s husband Andy (Bill Pullman), along with the ultimate fate of handsome Jed Hill, shows us that something both old and new is happening to the men in these films. Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) in Fatal Attraction (1988) is guilty of bringing evil into his domestic Eden, and in the end his wounded wife must kill the bitch. The only man aware of the bitch’s true nature in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1993) is the mental handicapped black handyman, Solomon (Ernie Hudson): the scientist husband is blind to her true nature even once he knows her true identity. In both these films the male “heroes” are weak and ineffectual, if not emasculated. Nick Curran (Michael Douglas again) in Basic Instinct (1992) is made of sterner stuff, but despite his nickname of “Shooter,” the film hints that he, too, will be a victim in the end. Malice provides a step—forward?—in the development of the American film hero, at least in the genre of thrillers. The male leads of the film are Andy and Jed. Andy’s shortened name suggests his initial weakness, while Jed’s name suggests his hunkiness—it’s the sort of name you find attached to cleft-chinned romantic soap opera heroes. The names match the physical attributes of each character. Bill Pullman’s Andy is slightly built, has a non-descript face, and is always dressed in a corduroy or tweed jacket, button-down Oxford cloth shirt, and knitted tie—suitable if stereotypical garb for an Associate Dean of Students. Jed is the former high school running back, solid and athletic (we see him jogging energetically, for instance, while Andy drinks coffee), and the film allows him to doff his shirt frequently, so that the viewer may admire Alec Baldwin’s broad and hairy chest. The way each man handles his women is also instructive. Andy has married, according to the local campus newspaper, his “favorite student.” We aren’t meant to raise our post-Anita Hill eyebrows at this. The detail is provided so that we may understand that Andy is not man enough for a Real Woman: he needs a “student wife,” someone young enough to be malleable in his inexperienced hands. Of course, Tracy turns out to be anything but malleable. The film foreshadows this by way of a sex scene between Andy and Tracy. The happy couple are eating take-out Chinese in bed (perhaps a reference to the scene in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which also concerns the power balance between an older man and a younger woman). Andy can’t handle the chopsticks, and says to his wife, “Would you think any the less of me if I used a fork?” Tracy coyly begins to feed him from her chopsticks, and before we know it she is straddling him and they are having sex. It is Tracy who is on top, both literally and figuratively. She is less prudish and more aggressive than her husband; she doesn’t mind the curtainless windows and he does. Andy remains passive throughout, and all we see of his naked body is a scrawny lower leg. You can tell he doesn’t jog. Jed, on the other hand, is a Real Man. When we see him having sex, Jed is energetically...

There's a Picture on the Wall of Jesus in the Garden

There's a Picture on the Wall of Jesus in the Garden That song was playing on the radio in Brenda Kaye's living room. You know, the one about the couple getting married, buying a house, and becoming an American Family. "Shu-u," warned Mrs. Davenport, Brenda Kaye's mother, placing a square chapped finger over lips that looked more penciled than real. "Listen to that!" she whispered and put her arm around my shoulder to show no hard feelings. I stood silently while she patted her corduroy foot and rubbed the back of my neck and shoulders. When the song trailed into the local and state news from WKIS, Mrs. Davenport clasped her hands, did a little Art Carney shuffle in her Deerfoams, and in a normal speaking voice said, "Brenda Kaye, Irving's here." That was the only time I have ever heard anyone call someone in an adjoining room without actually calling. "It's Erin," I corrected Mrs. Davenport , pronouncing my name slowly. "A-a-rin." "From the Bible," Mrs. Davenport concluded. "Aaron. Different. For a girl, that is, but I like it." Brenda Kaye came in the living room carrying Samantha, the egg. It was my weekend to babysit. We had painted a face on Sam and Brenda Kaye's mother had made her a bassinet from a grocery store carton that came with tomatoes. I 45 noticed Brenda Kaye had added a bonnet . "Cute," I said, fluffing the floppy brim. "She ready to go?" Brenda Kaye pushed the tomato carton towards me. "Take her. She's yours! For the whole weekend." She delivered our child to my outstretched hands. "And good riddance, I might add!" Brenda Kaye said, brushing her palms against her miniskirt. Mrs. Davenport sat in a burlap-cushioned chair and spread her elbows on the wagon-wheel armrests. "Don't talk about your baby thataway, Brenda Kaye," she said. "What if I was to treat you like that?" Besides," she cooed, "that's the only gran'young'n I've got." "And it's the only one you're going to get, Momma," Brenda Kaye spewed. "If it weren't for that Human Relations Seminar that's required for graduation, you wouldn't have gotten Samantha." She retied the knot at the edge of her tee shirt and twisted her miniskirt so that the back slit was exact. "I guess the project served its purpose, though. I—for one— am not ready for this kind of—" "—I don't know how you could be tired of her already," Mrs. Davenport interrupted, fumbling among the jars of cold cream and bottles of hand lotion on the reading table beside her chair, '"cause I kept her two nights while you went out gallivanting. Ain't that right, Aaron?" I nodded, more interested in the paraphernalia on the table than in Mrs. Davenport's babysitting. In addition to half a dozen bottles and jars, there appeared to be an entire collection of toiletry and cosmetic products. Brenda Kaye saw me looking at the display. "Momma's a nut for Mary Kaye cosmetics ," she said matter-of-factly. "I told her she ought to be pounding on doors herself and driving a brand new pink Cadillac instead of sitting here watching reruns of Bewitched and shelling out Daddy's insurance money." "Now, wouldn't I be a sight riding around in a Cata'lac," Mrs. Davenport offered. "The blind leading the blind! I wouldn't make a good saleslady, anyhow . I'm just an old homebody." She laughed and added, "Contented to babysit a hard-boiled egg!" Brenda Kaye pushed a strand of auburn hair behind her silver and turquoise loop earring. "Well, we won't have to worry about it much longer. One more weekend." "One more long weekend," I admitted. "And then it's over. Then we eat Samantha !" Mrs. Davenport pumped the spout protruding beneath the cellophanecovered lampshade. Light filtered through the canvas. "I want you to see my picture of Jesus in the Garden before you go," she said, motioning towards the corner. Stand back aways. You can see it shimmer. See?" I saw something, but I think it was just...

Willy Loman's Brother Ben: Tragic Insight in Death of a Salesman

WILLY LOMAN'S BROTHER BEN: TRAGIC INSIGHT IN DEATH OF A SALESMAN IN THE TIlIRTEEN YEARS since Arthur Miller's Death at a Salesman had its spontaneous Broadway success, critics have often cited as a deficiency in it the lack of tragic insight in its hero, Willy Loman. ceHe never knew who he was,"says his son Biff at Willy's grave; and by a like judgment critics can substantially discount the play's tragic claims. But Biffs chonc commentary on his father, like many other very quotable remarks in the scene of Willy's "requiem," is not quite true. Willy did struggle againstself..knowledge-trying not to know "what" he was; but he had alwaysasuperh consciousness of his own individual strength as a "who." "I am not a dime a dozen\" he shouts in the play's crisis; "I am Willy Loman . .. \" And it is this very sense of his personal force and high regard for it which qualify him as a hero. What turns this self-esteem into something tragic and self-destructive is his contrasting awareness that, in spite of his powers, he is not what he wants to be. Himself partially unaware that he actually desires simple fulfillment as a father, Willy dreams of being an'important businessman, greatly admired by his two sons. He has misconstrued the ideal of fatherhood, confuSing it with the ability to confer wealth and prestige. Because of this misplaced idealism-and his related commitment to the economic delusion known as "the American dream" -he seems not to have the stature of the traditional tragic hero. , That, as his son Biff says, Willy has "the wrong dreams" is certainly true. What criticism has to decide, in the light of the play's dramatic structure, is whether this common human defect does not increase rather than weaken his effectiveness as tragic hero. Because playwright Miller has buttressed the. basic realism of Salesman with strongly expressionistic elements, analysis of his play has to be made carefully. Willy's stage presence does not equal his characterization, as it would in a more conventional play. Instead of simply appearing in the events on stage,he himself-or rather, his confused mind-is the scene of much of the dramatic action. ConsideratiOI;I. of tragic insightrn Willy, ,then, leads one to notice an expressionist device which reappears with the regularity of a motif in episodes taking place in Willy's consciousness. This is the 409 410 MODERN DRAMA February stylized characterization of Willy's rich brother Ben who, when closely observed, takes shape less as a person external to Willy than as a projection of his personality. Ben personifies his brother's dream of easy wealth. Ben is the only important character not physically present during Willys last day. He is on stage only as he exists in Willy's mind. B1Jt he is the first person whom Willy asks in his present distress, "What's the answer?"; and in the end it is Ben's answer which Willy accepts. As one critic summarizes it: Ben "walked into the jungle and three years later came out with a million"; Ben shot off to Alaska to "get in on the ground floor"; Ben was never afraid of new territories, new faces, no smiles. In the end, Ben's last territory-Death-earns Willy Louwis family $20,000 insurance money, and a chance for them finally to accomplish his dream: a dream of which they have never been capable, in which they also can only be buried: the old "million" dream.1 Although Ben is dead before the play begins, the force which he symbolizes draws Willy to suicide. Ben also stands out as the plays only predominantly formalized characterization. That in him Miller combines realism with expressionism in a ratio inverse to that of the rest of the play seems another indication of his distinctive symbolic function. The audience first sees him when memories of a visit paid by him some twenty years before push themselves into Willy's consciousness. "William," he boasts, "when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And, by God, I was richl" This...

Pledge and Right of Subrogation When they co-exist on the Same Insurance Money

Pledge and Right of Subrogation When they co-exist on the Same Insurance Money

Moot Case on Murder and Arson

William styles was tried at the Oxbridge Assizes on charges of murder and arson. The evidence for the prosecution showed that Styles was the owner and manager of a shop with extensive storerooms, and that at 10 p.m. on the 21st June, Styles deliberately set fire to the building in order to claim the insurance money. John Doe, a storekeeper employed by Styles, was burned to death. No evidence was produced as to why Doe was in the building at that hour. The staff usually left at 6 p.m. though it was not unknown for members to stay later, although no instance of anyone staying as late as 10 p.m. could be adduced. Styles did not search the building before he set it on fire.

Degree of Evidence Necessary to Prove Criminal Charge in Civil Suit in Illinois

T HE English rule is that if the commission of a crime is directly in issue in any civil proceeding, it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.' The general American rule, on the other hand, is that where proof of crime is necessary in a civil case, it is enough to prove it by a preponderance of the evidence.2 The Illinois Supreme Court has chosen, for reasons which are by no means obvious, to follow the English instead of the general American rule. Unfortunately, however, the later Illinois cases have confused and confounded the subject so that by the year 1925 the decisions were in hopeless conflict. Some followed the English and some the American rule. Thus, we find the following cases in support of the English view: Crandall v. Dawson3 (slander for charge of perjury); Darling v. Banks4 (slander for charge of perjury); Harbison v. Shooks (slander for charge of perjury); McConnell v. Delaware Mutual Safety Insurance Co.6 (Suit to recover insurance money from one alleged to have caused the fire); Germania Fire Insurance Co. v. Klewer7 (Suit on fire insurance policy where defense was made that plaintiff burned the building); Cottam v. National Mutual Church Insurance Co.8 (Action against fire insurance company, defense be-

Some Legal Aspects of Life Insurance Trusts

'The author is indebted, for help in the preparation of this article, to his assistant, Mr. Samuel Silverman, Decisions Editor of the Columbia Law Review, and to Messrs. Charles Looker, Robert L. Redfield, Jr., David M. Solinger, and Miss Helen H. Robinson, members of the I929 seminar in decedents' estates at the Columbia University Law School. 2Bassil v. Lister, 9 Hare I77 (Eng. I85I) is a case in which the English Chancery Court sustained the legality of an arrangement by which Lister insured the lives of his two sons and by will provided for the continuance of premium payments out of the income of his estate. This English trust differed from modern life insurance trusts in that the policies were not on the life of the creator or settlor, and the trust was created by will, thus taking effect only at the death of the settlor. The Girard Trust Company of Philadelphia established, on June I3, I869, what appears to have been the first life insurance trust in this country. The Providence Life and Trust Company of Philadelphia, on January 27, I877, wrote a life insurance trust under which the settlor assigned all his interest in a policy upon his life to the company, which as trustee was to collect the insurance money from itself as an insurance company, paying the income to the settlor's widow for life and the principal, at her death, outright to his daughter. The Northern Trust Company of Chicago was the first trust company, which was not also an insurance companv, to receive a life insurance trust. This was on March i8, I897. See STEPHENSON, LIVING TRUSTS (I926) I9; (I926) 42 TRUST COMPANIES 867. 3 See the address by F. H. Sisson, I928-A Record Year for Trust Service, published by the Guaranty Trust Company, New York. Mr. Sisson reports the results of a survey made by the Trust Company Division of the American Bankers Association. (346)

Vendor and Purchaser. Insurance. Vendee's Claim to Insurance Money Received by Vendor in Absence of Assignment

Vendor and Purchaser. Insurance. Vendee's Claim to Insurance Money Received by Vendor in Absence of Assignment

Vendee's Claim to Insurance Money Received by Vendor

Vendee's Claim to Insurance Money Received by Vendor

Insurance. Payment of Premiums with Stolen Funds. Right to Insurance Money

Insurance. Payment of Premiums with Stolen Funds. Right to Insurance Money

The Disposition of Insurance Money When the Beneficiary Murders the Insured

The Disposition of Insurance Money When the Beneficiary Murders the Insured

Insurance. Nature and Incidents of Insurance Contracts. Right of Holder of Lien to Insurance Money

Insurance. Nature and Incidents of Insurance Contracts. Right of Holder of Lien to Insurance Money

Bankruptcy: Equitable Rights under Unrecorded Mortgage: Agreement to Insure: Equitable Lien on Insurance Money

Bankruptcy: Equitable Rights under Unrecorded Mortgage: Agreement to Insure: Equitable Lien on Insurance Money

Application of Insurance Money to Interest on Mortgage

Application of Insurance Money to Interest on Mortgage

Vendor and Purchaser. Vendor's Lien Reserved. Application of Insurance Money

Vendor and Purchaser. Vendor's Lien Reserved. Application of Insurance Money