Cropper Wins Appeal
Page 44
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AN appeal by Ralph Charles Cropper. transport consultant, against conviction for making a false statement to obtain a variation on a carrier's licence. was allowed with 75 gns. costs at London Sessions on Wednesday. In December he had been fined £25, with 100 gns. costs, by the Marlborough Street magistrate, Mr. J. Aubrey Fletcher. After hearing a submission by Mr. J. R. C. Samuel-Gibbon, for Cropper, the deputy chairman, ,Mr. O. S. Macleay, ruled that there was no case to answer. He refused an application by Mr. Michael Self, for the respondent magistrate, to state a case.
Mr. Self said that Copper had stated on a Ministry of Transport form for the variation of an A licence that the operat
ing centre of a company called Longfield
Transport Ltd. was at 56a Abbey Grove, Abbey Wood. In fact, he said, no opera tions were conducted by the company there, nor was there any intention to operate from that base. Had the Licen
sing Authority known this, said Mr. Self, the variation would probably not have been granted. The form, said Mr. Self, had been signed by a " dummy " director of Long field Transport who had no knowledge of what was going on, and it had been submitted by Cropper; the latter was a
transport consultant but Longfield Transport was at the time his company, stated Mr. Self.
Submitting that there was no case to answer, Mr. Samuel-Gibbon maintained it was abundantly clear that the respon dents had utterly failed to establish their case. The fact that vehicles did not start from or return to the base in Abbey Grove was not at all a necessary element in an operating centre, he said.