Transport manager was little more than traffic clerk
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• A former transport manager of Mainland Market Deliveries Ltd, who aided and abetted drivers to commit hours and records offences under the domination of his boss was fined a total of £108 with £12 costs at Lewes magistrates' court last week. Edward Arthur Stephens had appeared to answer 61 charges. He pleaded guilty to 18 of the charges and the prosecution offered no evidence on the remaining 43 and asked for a formal verdict of not guilty.
After a submission of nullity had been rejected by the court, Mr M. Burrell, representing Stephens, pointed out that although his client had been regarded as the transport manager of Mainland Market Deliveries Ltd, at its Newhaven depot, he had been little more than a traffic clerk in effect. He had had no real executive powers and his function had been merely to relay the orders of the depot manager to the drivers.
He had been unable properly to check the authenticity of drivers' records with other office records and had on six occasions refused to sign daily records sheets which were to his own knowledge incorrectly completed.
However, on at least one occasion he had been faced with a spurious record sheet contrived by the depot manager and had been told to "get that signed and file it before anybody sees it". This he had done under threat of dismissal if he did not comply with the depot manager's instructions.
Stephens had made two attempts to draw the attention of the company's directors at Portsmouth to the conditions prevailing at Newhaven, said Mr Burrell, but without success. After the depot manager had been dismissed, Stephens had run the depot for two months before it was closed down without any irregularities taking place.
For the prosecution, Miss Margaret Cosgrave said that the principle of pleading orders from superiors to justify unlawful acts was settled at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. Although there might be little doubt that Stephens had been acting under the orders of his superior, this did not excuse him from complying with the law. The drivers' daily record sheets had been signed, in the main, by Stephens as transport manager and not, as would have been expected, on behalf of the transport manager, if he were not so.