Agent Takes Amwest Suit to Investors : Commissions: A Massachusetts insurance executive writes to the company’s stockholders, saying the firm owes him thousands of dollars.

Not content to leave his gripe with Amwest Surety Insurance Co. to the courts, Massachusetts insurance agent Alfred D. Jordan has taken his case to some major stockholders of the company as well.

Insurance Diagnostics of Massachusetts Insurance Agency, which Jordan owns, filed suit against Amwest Surety Insurance Co. of Woodland Hills for about $340,000 in Superior Court in Van Nuys, claiming that the company owes it thousands of dollars worth of commissions for selling Amwest’s insurance policies.

Insurance Diagnostics claims Amwest owes it commissions for marketing various surety bonds, which are like insurance policies that guarantee the performance of the holder, such as a building contractor, to a third party. The bond is a financial guarantee that the work will be performed.

But Jordan has also sent a letter to major Amwest stockholders complaining that the company was refusing to pay him the money he said he was owed.

Robert C. Goodell, chief financial officer of Amwest Insurance Group (Amwest Surety Insurance Co.’s parent), said the company has acted in good faith toward Jordan, but declined to comment further on the case, which was filed in April.

Last month, a judge ordered Amwest and Insurance Diagnostics to take their cases to an independent arbitrator before Feb. 1. The judge warned that if Insurance Diagnostics did not try to arbitrate the case first, he might dismiss it.

Last Monday the law firm originally representing Insurance Diagnostics in court sought a judge’s permission to stop working on the case because the company allegedly owes the law firm $17,621. The law firm, Pettit & Martin of San Jose, complained in a court filing that Jordan had refused to communicate with his attorneys.

Jordan admitted that he could not pay the attorneys but denied that he had lost touch with them.

In the six months that ended June 30, Amwest’s net income increased 5% to $1.66 million from $1.58 million a year before, and its net premiums--an insurance industry measure of total revenue--climbed 31% to $22.4 million from $17.1 million in 1989.

According to the lawsuit, Insurance Diagnostics had an agreement, beginning in February, 1987, to be the exclusive agent for Amwest in Massachusetts in marketing the companies’ surety bonds.

At the center of the case is the question of how much money Amwest owes Jordan and his agency on business Amwest did in Massachusetts.

Insurance Diagnostics claims that it was to be paid a cut of any business that Amwest did in Massachusetts, whether or not it was generated by Insurance Diagnostics. Amwest was also supposed to pay Insurance Diagnostics a contingent commission as a kind of bonus if Amwest did a large amount of business in the state, the agency claims.

Court records show that Amwest and Insurance Diagnostics disagree over whether that bonus agreement was in effect in 1989, and whether the bonus was to be paid only for business that Insurance Diagnostics generated--or whether it was for all business Amwest did in Massachusetts.

As part of its lawsuit, Insurance Diagnostics tried to get a judge to force Amwest to immediately put up $135,692--the amount the Massachusetts agency claimed it could easily prove Amwest owed. But a judge ordered Amwest only to put up about $34,000.