Court Overrules T.A.T. in Increasing Compensation
Page 30
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE Court of Appeal, last week, allowed an appeal by the Road Haulage Executive against the Transport Arbitration Tribunal's action in increasing from 09,456 to £97,581 the compensation payable to Messrs. C. and G. Yeoman. Wincheap Street, Canterbury, for their haulage business. The sum of £89,456 had, the 12,xecutive contended, been agreed between the parties..
Giving judgment, the Master of the Rolls (Sir Raymond Evershed) said that the Tribunal should neVer have intervened and had been "misled by their own zeal and enthusiasm."
A cross-appeal by Messrs. Yeoman. claiming that to the compensation awarded there should be added an amount in respect of goodwill.' was dismissed, The Executive contended that the Tribunal was wrong in law in holding that deductions for the value of services rendered by the partners in the business ought not' to he made in arriving at the profit made, Nothing for Goodwill • The respondents, in support of their cross-appeal, maintained that the Tribunal was wrong in holding that the, compensation, which provided for the cessation of the business by them. was equivalent to payment for goodwill, and that they were not entitled to a sum for goodwill in addition 10 " the sum awarded.
Mr. Milner Holland, K.C., for the Executive, said that this was the first ease of its kind to come before the court. but a number of similar cases and large sums of money were involved: The Tribunal had deferred its decision in many other cases until the ruling of the court in the present litigation had been announced.
Giving judgment-the Master of the Rolls said the Tribunal was empowered by the Transport Act to intervene only Where a dispute existed between the Executive and the owners of businesses being taken over. In this case there was no dispute, because an agreement had been signed that .L89.456 was the proper compensation to be paid to Messrs. Yeoman.
Tribunal's Request This agreement had to go to the Tribunal for confirmation, and it was only afterwards-that the Tribunal wrote to Messrs. Yeoman that there appeared to be one or two matters About which it desired to hear arguments.
"All the Tribunal was asked to do," said his lordship, was to confirm this agreement, and there being no dispute. the Tribunal shoOld never have intervened as they did. There was no basis for their suggestion to one of the parties that they had an obligation to investigate other matters. They were, I think. Misled by their own zeal and enthusiasm."
The court, he added, had been asked to decide, as a question of principle. whether deductions for the value of the services of the partners in this business should, or should not, have been made A28 in arriving at the net annual .profits. But the court had not a scrap of evidence on which it could reach a decision, and it refused to attempt to do so.
The question. raised by Messrs. Yeoman. of adding to the compensation something for goodwill, was not a matter for the court to decide.
La conclusion, his lordship said, "The Tribunal has misapprehended its duties Linder the Act."
Lord Justice Jenkins, agreeing. said that the Tribunal never applied itself to the only question which it had power to deal with, namely, whether the agreement should he confirmed.
Lord Justice Hodson also agreed. The court directed that the agreement be confirmed in its original form FERGUSON EIGHT-WHEELER?
WHEN Harry Ferguson Research. Ltd., announced on Monday that an advanced stage had been reached in the production of a prototype "people's ear," a spokesman of the company told The Birmingham Post" that the plans were concerned with a basic design equally adaptable to an eight-wheeled lorry as 10 a light passenger vehicle.
BRICK DRIVERS' INCREASE raATING beck to the first fall pay L./period following September 1, 1951, a wage increase of 7s. a week has been awarded by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal to transport workers employed in the pressed-brick industry.