[Dev] getting an assertion trying to create item

[bear]

It's probably my addled brain but here goes:

In this snippet of python code I get an assertion error:  assert 
cls.mailMessageKindID, "Mail message not yet loaded"

from OSAF.contentmodel.mail.Mail import MailMessage

msg = MailMessage()

now there is a bunch of stuff around this but I know it's probably 
something really silly

thanks,
bear