PARKING OFFENCE Convicted For Failing To Reply To Notice

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31166, 16 September 1966, Page 1

PARKING OFFENCE Convicted For Failing To Reply To Notice

<Ncu> Zealand Press Assoclaifonl

AUCKLAND, September 15.

Mr Justice Gresson yesterday upheld the conviction of a Whangarei firm for failing to reply to a Transport Department notice asking for information after a parking offence by one of the firm’s vehicles.

His Honour described the appeal as "in a sense a test case”, giving rise to a short point of considerable practical importance.

He gave his ruling after a one-day hearing of a case stated from the Magistrate’s Court at Whangarei.

The appellant was McKay Electrical, Ltd., and the respondent Robert Maxwell Rood, of the Transport Department.

His Honour said that a vehicle belonging to the company had been left in a timeexpired metered parking space.

The department sent a notice seeking all the information in the company’s possession or obtainable by it which might lead to the apprehension of the driver.

The company’s accountant made inquiries among the staff and was unable to identify the driver positively. One of three or four persons had the right to drive the car at the particular time. “As he had been unable to locate the actual driver to his own satisfaction, he made no reply to the notice," said his Honour.

“The short question that the Court is called upon to decide is whether in so acting he failed to give all information in the company’s possession or obtainable by it, which

might have led to the identification of the driver. “Bona fide inquiries should, I think, have permitted the company to ascertain that a particular job was in progress near the parking space at the particular time ” , Such an inquiry should have permitted the company to furnish the names of the employees on the job. In the . circumstances, his Honour said, the company had failed to provide information and it was rightly convicted. “I also draw attention to the fact that in the notice in the present case, there is no instruction to the addressee informing him of any obligation to make a negative answer if his inquiries should prove i fruitless."