Cawley fines quashed
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• North Wales tipper operator Cawley Bros has had fines for overloading quashed on appeal to the crown court.
Chester Magistrates had fined Philip, Martin and Gwynfor Cawley £.300 with £200 costs after convicting them and driver George Jones of exceeding the permitted weight of the two rear compensating axles of a 30tonne tipper by 1,560kg, (8%), • They gave Jones an absolute discharge. Mold Crown Court heard that Jones had check-weighed after collecting a load of ballast at Penmaenmawr and the vehicle had been within its permitted gross weight. He had adjusted the load at the dynamic weighbridge by driving at a brisk walking pace and then braking sharply.
For the partners Jonathan Lawton said the driver's evidence showed that braking and accelerating moved the load.
Jones had been stopped by the police and had then driven into the dynamic weighbridge site, stopping in a queue of vehicles waiting to be weighed, Each time the queue moved he stopped and started again.
Jones had been required to weigh before leaving the quarry: there were no public axle weighing facilities available in the area and there was little more that the firm could have done.
Lawton referred the court to the decisions in the E Dowse & Son case when Leeds Crown Court held that an absolute discharge was appropriate if a haulier was morally blameless for an offence of overloading. He also cited the case of Advanced Fuels at Croydon Crown Court, where an £800 fine following a lost wheels incident was quashed on the grounds that the company had done everything possible to ensure the vehicle was in a roadworthy condition.
Quashing the fines, and substituting absolute discharges, Judge Geoffrey Kilfoyle said that as the magistrates had given the driver an absolute discharge he found it surprising that Cawley Bros should have been penalised.