Revocation for User Offences
Page 13
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FOR operating four A-licensed vehicles outside their normal user, the Metropolitan Licensing Authority, Mr. D. I. R. Muir, has-revoked the licence of B. G. Gale, Ltd., of Covent Garden. Mr. Muir also refused an application by the company for a new A licence. Mr. Muir had called upon the company under section 178(1)(d) of the 1960 Act to show cause why their licence should not be revoked or suspended because they had used vehicles at variance with declared statements of intention. An inquiry was held on September 18 and Mr. Muir made known his decision fast week.
Up to the beginning of 1956, Mr. Muir said, the company were A-licensed hauliers based at Woodford, Essex, with four vehicles carrying " milk within 25 miles of King's Langley, Chelmsford and Bishop's Stortford." About that time the shares of the company were acquired by Mr. Nello Simoni, the managing director of Nello Simoni, Ltd., fruit merchants of Covent Garden. When the licence became due for renewal in January, 1958, an application was submitted for the same normal user but stating that the base was Covent Garden. There were no objectors and the licence was accordingly granted. "in fact, from the time of the acquisition of the shares, no.milk has been carried and the vehicles have been used for various purposes but mainly to carry fruit from Portsmouth," Mr. Muir said in his decision. Unless there was an appeal
the licence would be revoked as from December 1.
Dealing with the application, Mr. Muir said that as there was now no A licence to surrender, the application was a straightforward one for a new licence. Most of the customers were hauliers who employed Gale as sub-contractors. The case largely rested on the need for a licence to carry fruit and vegetables, for Nello Simoni. There was no difficulty in showing that Nello Simoni had made substantial use of the services of the tour vehicles in the past.
"1 am invited to say that that is the best possible evidence of need," Mr. Muir continued. " I am more inclined to say that is the worst possible evidence of need."
Mr. Muir said that there were many doors into the road transport industry. He had yet to learn that a trader could successfully force an entrance by acquiring a licence granted for other purposes; could use that licence to carry what in effect were his own goods and then, on the evidence of such carrying, claim that he was entitled to a licence to carry goods for hire and reward.
." I had hoped that all such attempts to exploit the separateness in law of such persons as Nello Simoni, Ltd., and B. G. Gale, Ltd., would have been scotched by the Merchanerse Transport Court of Appeal judgment." Mr. Muir concluded his judgment.
The application was refused.