Travel agent advertised as coach operator
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BIRMINGHAM coach operators L. F. Bowen Ltd last week failed in a High Court bid for a jail order on the man who sold them his £196,000 coach business.
The compaily and a subsidiary, L. F. Bowen (Flights Coaches) Ltd, complained to Mr Justice Watkins in London that Mr Frank Kenneth Flight was operating another coach business within 25 miles of the centre of Birmingham in defiance of a court order.
They wanted him jailed for contempt.
But the judge decided that Mr Flight, of "White Haven," Aldridge Road, Little Aston, had actually been carrying on business as a travel and tour agent and not as a coach operator.
The Judge said that in 1973 Mr Flight sold his family coach operating business to Bowens for £196,000—E45,000 of which was the goodwill.
There was a restrictive covenant which prevented Mr Flight from operating a coach business withing 25 miles of the centre of Birmingham for five years after the sale.
Bowens were later granted a High Court order restraining Mr Flight, his wife Alice and their company, Flight Tours Ltd, from breaking the covenant.
But Bowens complained that Mr plight and his company were continuing to advertise themselves as coach operators. These advertisements were "as monstrous a misrepresentation as he could have perpetrated," said the Judge. After the sale in 1973 Mr Flight had not been engaged in the business of a coach operator.
"He was generally laying the ground for a time when he would again acquire coaches and operate them," said the Judge.
The Judge added that even if there had been a breach of the court order he would not have committed Mr Flight to prison because ffie necessary documents had not been served on him in time.