Petrol Company’s Claim For £lO82 Succeeds

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 20

Petrol Company’s Claim For £lO82 Succeeds

Patrick Vincent Kirby, a service station proprietor, must pay to Europa Oil (N.Z.), Ltd., the sum of £lOB2, which the company claimed as payment for petroleum products supplied, says a reserved judgment of Mr Justice Wilson, issued in the Supreme Court yesterday. Ait the hearing of the company’s claim on Thursday Mr R. J. de Goldi, counsel for Kirby, contended that his client was not liable to pay the amount because the supplying of those products to him was an illegal act on the part of the company. Europa’s extension of up to £l3OO credit to Kirby while he was proprietor of the Boomerang Service Station was in fact a loan, Mr de Goldi claimed. Because relevant legislation prohibited any motor spirit wholesaler from having any interest in a retailer, the deliveries of petroleum prod-

ucts were in breach of the Motor Spirits Distribution Act, and were therefore illegal and no payment could be recovered, counsel submitted. Mr de Goldi had submitted that the credit arrangement between the parties was a mere device by means of which the company really made a loan or loans to Kirby, and thus acquired an estate or interest in his business. Of this contention, the judgment says: “As any credit arrangement between a wholesaler and a ■retailer in the motor spirits industry would be open to the same construction, and inconvenience resulting from it is obvious, this factor will incline the Court to view it with caution, but that can-

not, of course, lead to its rejection if the words of the statute fairly bear that meaning.” • His Honour says: “The omission by a wholesaler to insist upon cash on delivery does not, of itself, affect the retailer’s independence, and the wholesaler’s voluntary offer to refrain from insisting on prompt payment as part of the price fortifies rather than undermines that independence. ' It may excite feelings of gratitude in the retailer’s breast (although it appears not to have done so within the defendant), but it cannot excite apprehension of a kind likely to result in dependence. - I cannot think, therefore, that there was anything in the arrangement between these parties which was inimical to the legislature’s intention to preserve retailers’ independence.” Mr M. F. Hobbs appeared for the company.