FARMER'S APPEAL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 206, 1 September 1941, Page 8

FARMER'S APPEAL

TRANSPORT SCHEDULE

SUPREME COURT ACTION

"This is the third motion of the kind. The Crown in the other two withdrew the schedules, and the Authority then sought to make a schedule which is the subject of this action," said Mr. Sexton in opening, before Mr. Justice Fair in the Supreme Court to-day, a motion for a writ of certiorari in respect to a schedule of cartage rates fixed by Mr. E. J. Phelan, Licensing Authority for the No. 1 Licensing District. The plaintiff was David Thornton Hyland, sheepfarmer, of Rewiti, near Helensville (Mr. Sexton), and Mr. V. R. Meredith and Mr. Rosen appeared for defendant.

The grounds of the application were that a certain schedule of rates for the cartage of goods was made without notice having been given to plaintiff, a person likely to be affected; and that the Authority showed preferential and unequal treatment to different users of transport. The unequal treatment was stated to be right of contract given to Government departments, local authorities and others at other than schedule rates, while individuals whose cartage did not exceed £30 a week had no such right of contract.

Mr. Sexton said that in the district, the North Auckland area, there were about 400 carriers operating in widely diverse conditions. Plaintiff was a sheepfarmer whose cartage was done bv the Kaipara Transport Co. and P. Cane, of Waimauku, but which did not amount to £30 a week. Plaintiff was a person affected by the schedule, which was fixed at meetings that had been advertised in a newspaper, but plaintiff had not been given individual notice of such meetings to fix the schedule. Counsel submitted that the schedule rates took away plaintiff's common law right to make private contracts for his cartage, which was a substantial item in his business. Plaintiff was not aware of the meetings at which the new schedule was fixed, or of the new schedule until he found the charges had been raised.

"The difficulty I see to your first ground," said his Honor, "is the difficulty it puts the Licensing Authority in by having to give personal notice to everybody likely to be affected. It might mean every man in the community. The statute has to be interpreted in a reasonable and liberal spirit. Public notice in a newspaper seems a reasonable way."

Mr. Sexton contended it was reasonable to expect the Authority to obtain lists of the licensees' customers and notify them. Objection was taken to the wholesale way in which the business was done, by lumping all the users in one class, over a very large area of country, and the limited time allowed for the hearing _of evidence.

Argument is proceeding.