A CORONER accused of stealing thousands of pounds from the beneficiaries of ten wills, took £86,000 in fees for handling one estate, a court was told yesterday.

Jeremy David Cave, 53, of The Grange, Balk, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, was appointed solicitor of Ethel Johnson's will after she died in 1990, aged 89.

One of the will's executors, Samuel Ballard, told Teesside Crown Court that Mr Cave said he would charge £80-an-hour for his services.

"I had no idea whether it was excessive or not," he told the jury.

In 1994, when the complex £850,000 estate was still being processed, he said he received bills totalling £86,000 from Mr Cave, which he thought was "an enormous amount of money".

Andrew Wheeler, prosecuting, asked if it was the first he knew of fees being taken from the estate. He said it was.

"I had never seen figures like that in my life," he said. "I knew he (Mr Cave) had had a lot of work, but I didn't think for one moment it was that amount of work."

He, Mr Cave, and the other executor, Peter Hatch, held a meeting to discuss the fees.

He said Mr Hatch complained that the fees were exorbitant and told Mr Cave not to take any more money from the estate until the final bill was given.

"It caused a bit of a rumpus and Mr Cave offered to resign to allow us to appoint someone else. However, we talked him round. We didn't want to lose him, or at least I didn't want to lose him."

He described Mr Cave, the coroner for the western district of North Yorkshire, as a "dear friend" and a "good man" whose door was always open to anyone in trouble.

Mr Cave denies ten counts of theft alleged to have taken place between April 1990 and July 2000. The case continues.