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Seeking justice
Page 7
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The latest High Court ruling on stowaway fines may at first glance seem like a slap in the face for international operators. However, the message is that whatever you think about the unfairness of penalising drivers and operators for massive security lapses in foreign ports, what cuts the mustard in Court is how far hauliers or drivers go to prevent stowaways from clambering aboard their wagons.
Never mind what we think about the fairness of fines, there's an inescapable logic in Mr Justice Butterfield's comments that the efficacy of the penalty scheme, and its deterrent effect, would be diluted if the means to pay were taken into account.
Ironically, CM s argument has never been with the scheme itself; but about how the burden for keeping stowaways out of trucks has fallen on the innocent—truck operators. For while liberal-minded folk have been only too keen to see Britain embrace the words of Emma Lazarus by taking in the tired, the poor, the wretched and huddled masses of some other teeming shore, it has been international hauliers who have paid the price for their humanitarian zeal.
If you challenge a stowaway fine in court, make sure you can show you did everything in your power to stop them hitching a ride in the first place.