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BJ Myers fined 5,200
Page 27
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• A stipendiary magistrate's decision to penalise a haulage firm for more than 300 drivers' hours offences last week, left Greenwich-based BJ Myers Haulage with a 23,200 fine and 22,000 costs. Charges brought against director and CPCholder Anthony Myers were dropped after it was found that the charges against him and the charges against the firm were identical.
Twenty drivers were charged at Wells Street Magistrates Court in central London with various hours and tachograph offences, but only four were fined. One driver was fined 2200, one 2150 and the remaining two 250 each. The other drivers' charges were adjourned "sine die" (a procedure which technically postpones the case indefinitely).
Jonathan Corballis, for the Metropolitan Licencing Authority, said an initial enquiry in 1983 into BJ Myers' affairs was thwarted due to the firm's records having been stolen. In 1986 the authority used observation vehicles to plot trucks' movements on six different dates and traffic examiners subsequently seized tachograph charts for July and August of that year.
Corballis said that the vehicles were then shown to be working outside their recorded hours. He argued that because Anthony Myers was a CPC holder and fulfilled the role of transport manager, he should be prosecuted. The court asked whether the drivers had been induced to work beyond the legal limit and Corballis admitted that he was not aware of how much the drivers or the company had benefitted from excessive drivers' hours.