LANARKSHIRE TRAMWAYS CO. WINS AN IMPORTANT ACTION
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Glasgow Magistrates' Right to Limit the Company's Activities Successfully Challenged AN important judgment was delivered by Lord Mackay a few days ago in the action by the Lanarkshire Tramways Co. against the magistrates of Glasgow, for the purpose of having their rights in relation to the running of buses within the city, of Glasgow, with or without certificates, judicially ascertained.
The company has since 1924 been running buses, for the use of the public, from various termini or stations in Lanarkshire to other towns within a statutory radius, and particularly into Glasgow. The company pleaded that it bad reason to complain that of recent years it had been subjected to restrictions on its traffic—first, by having imposed on it the necessity of taking out annual certificates or licences; and, secondly, by the imposition, through the medium of such certificates, of obnoxious conditions. These conditions, it was pleaded, practically prohibited the company's traffic to and from the centre of Glasgow.
It was contended on behalf of the corporation that the company was bound in terms of the statutory provisions to obtain certificates from the magistrates of Glasgow for buses operating within the city of Glasgow, and that the magistrates were entitled to insert in their certificates the conditions complained of.
Lord Mackay held that the pursuer was entitled to provide, work and use buses within the city of Glasgow to a distance of five miles from any point on the pursuer's tramways as existing at December 20th, 1929, and that with.. out the necessity of obtaininglacertificotes for the buses under the Glasgow Police Act, 1866. His lordship said that in his opinion the pursuer, taking the most general ground, was entitled to challenge the magistrates' committee, for that was its opponent, to show the court under what authority it proposed to impose the necessity, of a certificate issuing from that committee upon a
C42 public-utility body centred outside Glasgow and having parliamentary franchise to extend its runs into Glasgow.
The pursuer was also entitled, in his opinion, to put the onus dernonairandi on the committee to show wherein resided its power to impose, not so much conditions in general, but conditions of the nature of those attacked. The general Onus was remarkably reinforced by the fact that for many years vehicles ran without such demands. The objectionable conditions were :—(a) The delimitation of a central area in Glasgow wherein all running, or possession of stations, or taking up or setting down of passengers was forbidden ; in short, what the defender described as an endeavour "to isolate an •area in the centre of the city from the operations of the long-distance buses" ; (b) the regulation of the exact routes to be followed and the stopping places to be permittesi within the five-mile area. In his judgment, not only for the period from 1866 to 1888, but for the period from 1888 up to March let, 19:10, the pursuer was on various grounds entirely exempt from the taking out of certificates with the obnoxious conditions. From the point of view of an operative declarator here and now a certain difficulty was created by the peculiar provisions of the Glasgow Corporation Act of 1929. He thought it would be more correct to express his conclusion as regarded the short period since March let, 1930, if he put it alternatively.
Either upon. two of the lines of thought the pursuer's vehicles were not the proper subject of application for a certificate at all, or, • alternatively, if they did fall formerly under the necessity of a certificate, that certificate in their case was not properly tendered if it contained the obnoxious conditions referred to, for such matters as were there introduced could and should be effected only by by-law.
It is expected that an appeal against the decision will be made as soon as possible..