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Burton Grant Cut as Penalty: "Contempt Now Purged"
Page 49
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THE Transport Tribunal have reduced the extent of the grant of an A licence by the Eastern Licensing Authority to Mr. E. E. Burton, Walsoken, Wisbech, to apply to three vehicles and two trailers.. Mr. Burton asked for a licence for nine vehicles and four trailers, but was permitted to run six vehicles and two trailers.
The cut is to be regarded as a penalty for unlawful working, but does not prejudice future applications. A claim that Mr. Burton had operated illegally with four customers who held C-hiring margins was made by the appellants— the British Transport Commission, Brett's Transport, Ltd., and Messrs. C. J. Tribe and Sons.
In their decision, published last week, the Tribunal commented: "In this case, having regard on the one hand to the duration and volume of his [Mr. Burton's] illegalities and, on the other, to the fact that he was innocent of a deliberate intention to break the law, the appropriate course in our view is to reduce the grant which would have been made if his application had not been darkened by these illegalities."
The Tribunal added that on the evidence it would have been reasonable, all illegalities apart, to have granted a licence for five vehicles. Directing the Licensing. Authority to delete from the licence he had granted all vehicles except three and the two trailers, they corrimented:—
" We desire to make it plain that by suffering this penalty the respondent should be regarded as having, to employ a phrase used in the argument before us, purged his contempt.' His past illegalities must not be taken into account in the consideration of any
other application he has already made or may make in the future."
In their judgment, the Tribunal said that an applicant who was shown to have committed illegalities should, generally speaking, be penalized, but they did not lay down any general rule as to the assessment of punishment.
In some cases a Licensing Authority would be justified in ignoring illegal operations altogether. In others it might be right to decline to have any regard to alleged future requiretnents of customers obtained by past illegalities. In intermediate cases a Licensing Authority might be well advised, to mark his disapproval of an applicant's conduct, to delay grant.
Agreements between Mr. Burton and four customers for operation under Chiring margins were quoted. They were drawn up in a way that made it possible to say that it was contemplated that the drivers of the hired vehicles were to be in the employment of, and paid by, the customers. Evidence, however, showed that all the men who drove the vehicles had been engaged by Mr. Burton and that such of them as were dismissed were dismissed by him. The men looked to him for their wages.
Mr. Burton aiso did other things in connection with the drivers' employment and it seemed to the Tribunal that the men were acting as his servants.