Cases Must Be Properly Prepared
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HAULIERS who neglect to provide adequate evidence in support of their licence applications were criticized by Mr. D. I, Sandeison, solicitor to the North-Eastern Division of the C.M.U.A., at the annual meeting of the Division.
The effect of going into a traffic court with insufficient evidence was demoralizing, and it tended to give the Licensing Authority an unfavourable impression of hauliers as a whole, remarked Mr. Sandelson. That the railways had so often been successful before the Appeal Tribunal, he added, was partly due to the fact that, with their vast funds and equipment, they were able to present a good case.
The railway attitude towards applications for the renewal of 13 licences, which was resulting in the drastic limitation of the liberty of many B.licence operators, indicated what railway interests would do when A licences came up for renewal. Nothing but the greatest efficiency in the preparation of applications would secure elementary justice for hauliers.
Mr. Sandelson also made outspoken. comments on the interpretation in the police courts of the law affecting hauliers. He, was sure that Parliament never intended that, if a driver failed to keep a correct record, his employer should be fined, although the master had taken every possible step to see that the record was properly kept. Yet this was the ruling of the Divisional Court in the case of Cox and Siddery.
Referring to a case tried recently at the Leeds Assizes, Mr. Sandelson declared that to him it seemed a perversion of justice that a driver should be charged with perjury, because, not understanding the record forms, he had filled them up incorrectly. The driver was acquitted, but he (Mr. Sandelson) was alarmed at the view expressed at the trial by Mr. Justice Porter, who said that to fill up record forms inaccurately was perjury. On the other hand, a few months earlier, Mr. Justice Macnaghton had stated that in-. accurate completion of records by a driver did not constitute perjury.
Mr. G. E. Gilbey, chairman bf the Leeds centre of the Furniture Warehousemen and Removers Association, emphasized that it was important that hauliers should keep in as concise a form as possible all particulars of their work, so that the information would be readily available for use when they applied for the renewal of licences.