. WHAT IS "PLYING FOR HIRE " ?
Page 58
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
The Subject Examined in the Light oi Two Sets of Circumstances Shown to be Dissimilar.
By a Barrister-at-Law.
THE question as to when a motor omnibus can 1.:e legally stated to be " plying for lure" has been considered more than once by the courts, and the subject has again been examined by the judges in a recent case, when certain aspects relating to the modern transport of passengers were discussed at some length. In that case an information had been preferred by the respondent under Town Police Clauses Acts, 1847 and 1889. against the appellant for unlawfully plying for hire with a motor omnibus within the prescribed distance in a particular borough, for which bus a licence to ply for hire had not been previously. obtained. Section 45 of the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847, provides that every person so offending shall for every such offence be liable to a
penalty. •
. The appellant urged that as no fares were collected within the borough in question and .no passengers were shown to have travelled Upon the bus, except those holding return tickets issued outside the prescribed limits Where the appellant was, licensed to ply for hire, there had been no plying for hire within the prescribed limits mentioned and that he, therefore, had not cornmittted the offence charged. The respondent contended that the motor omnibus was being used to collect and receive passengers within the prescribed limits and that it was immaterial at what place the fare was paid and, further, that the case did not fall within section 3 of the Town Police Clauses Act, 1889, which provides that the term " omnibus " shall not include any omnibus starting from outside the prescribed distance and bringing passengers within the prescribed distance and not standing or plying for hire within the prescribed distance. . The local justices decided to convict the appellant upon the facts, but a case was stated by them for the opinion of the court as to whether or not, upon those facts, they had come to a correct determination and decision in point of law.
In 1922 a London company advertised motor coach excursions to a south-coast town and passengers bought tickets before the day of the journey ; it was then arranged where they were to be picked up. Upon the number of passengers being ascertained the respondent company hired a motor coach and the driver of it then started to collect the ticket holders, in the public street, as previously arranged with them. But the driver had no authority to pick up any other persons than these passengers who had thus booked seats, nor did he, in fact, do so.
The driver was proceeded against in the police court as the driver of an unlicensed carriage which *as unlawfully plying for hire within the Metropolitan Police district ; the owner of the motor coach was suunnoned for being the owner of an unlicensed carriage so plying for hire, and the respondent company were also proceeded against for aiding and abetting the driver in the commission of the offence. There the prosecution was instituted under the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act, 1869. The principle involved was, of course, a somewhat similar one, although the facts were different.
The stipendiary magistrate thought that, in this earlier case, there being no plying for hire within the meaning of section 7 of the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act, 1869, because no one could have obtained a seat in the London street named who had not previously booked his seat elsewhere. He dismissed the information, but stated a case.
One of the High Court judges who tried the 1922 case felt unable to say that the magistrate was wrong in holding that there was no plying for hire by a stage c36 carriage within the section named, althoughhe expressed the, opinion that the case seemed to him "to be within the mischief contemplated by the Act" of 1869, as amended by the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act,.1907. That appeal was dismissed.
It May be explained that prior to the 1907 Act mentioned, stage carriages which, on every journey, went to or came from some town or place beyend the limits of the Metropolitan Police district were exempt from the statutory provisions regulating hackney or stage carriages in the Metropolis. Under the Act of 1907 the Secretary of State made an order that all Acts and Orders relating to stage carriages in London should apply to every motor coach or other vehicle intended or used for the conveyance of passengers plying for hire in any street, road, or place in which the passengers were charged separate and distinct fares and Which on evere; journey went to or came from some town or place beyond London.
In a ease nearly 30 years ago the appellant owned a licensed cab and also an unlicensed wagonette. He solicited passengers at the station, where he had his cab; his wagonette then being in his coach-house. Nine persons arrived, but the cab could not hold them all, and they wanted to keep together. They offered, however, to hire a carriage from the appellant that would accommodate them all, and he took them to his wagonette, which they hired. Upon these facts it was held that the appellant could not be convicted. The learned judge in that particular case said : " It is, however, posssible that a man might ply for hire with a carriage without exhibiting it, bygoing round touting for customers. That is, however, not this case. The appellant was touting for customers for his licensed carriage." •
In the present case the High Court judges considered that the 1922 case, previously mentioned, was not so much the present case as the Opposite to it, upon the facts. These facts appeared to show that the tickets entitled the holders to 'leave or join the omnibus at any point of its journey, that the owner of the omnibus was a member of an association of omnibus proprietors with buses running between two distinct places, and that return tickets were available, on the day of issue or later, by any omnibus belonging to a member of the association, and not simply by the omnibus of that member issuing the tickets in the first place. Separate fares were charged for each passenger, end the association made its own arrangements and adjustments in order that each of such member's should receive what was earned by his own omnibuses. It seemed to be quite clear to the High Court that a ticket produced in the case was available for a journey by any of these vehicles at any time by any person in whose possession it happened to be. In the opinion of the learned judges "there was not a private hiring; there was a public and general service." On the ground, therefore, that, as the omnibus in question was being used in the particular borough for the collection and reception of passengers out of a large, unknown, and indeterminate class of persons with return tickets it was plying for hire within that borough, the appeal was dismissed.
It may be added that, after referring to a case in which it had been stated that there was a device for evading the provisions of the statutes requiring a licence to be obtained. to ply for hire within an Urban district, the Lord Chief Justice, in his judgment on the present occasion, remarked: "In this case also I think the plan adopted by the appellant was a good plan for evading the statutes, but it was not good enough."