WHAT TAXI MEN EARN

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 53, 31 August 1934, Page 13

WHAT TAXI MEN EARN

DIFFICULTY OF CHECKING

CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEM

How to check up the earnings of taxidrivers is a matter which, since tho introduction of the owner-driver system, appears to be giving considerable difficulty to members of the legal profession handling cases in which one of the parties happens to be a taxi-driver. Keference to the subject was made by Mr. W. P. Rollings in.'the Supremo Court yesterday. He said that counsel who had experience of maintenance cases iv the Magistrate 's Court well knpw the difficulty of verifying a statement of the earnings of a taxi-driver nowadays. It was impossible to obtain a check under the co-operative system under which most of tho men worked. Inquiries showed that the drivers paid tho companies a fixed rate, and the companies were not interested in what the men. earned-over and above that. Mr. Justice Ostler agreed that it would be difficult to obtain a check. The case before the Court was one in which a taxi-driver was asked by his former wife, who had obtained a divorce against him, to pay permanent maintenance to her. Mr. Boilings appeared for the wife, and Mr. T. P. McCarthy for the taxi-driver. Counsel informed tho Court that neither of their clients was in happy financial circumstances. Mr. Rollings said that _ the wife was able: to earn only a little money from dressmaking and was almost destitute. Mr. McCarthy pointed out that if the husband was ordered to pay £.1 a week,, as suggested, ho.would be forced on fed. relief works. : ■••■: His Honour said-it was a difficult.case: of a type that;in the present difficult, times he was constantly having before him. As Mr.- .Rollings had pointed out, payments made by the respondent did not precisely correspond with the accounts as to his earnings. The divorce was founded on adultery. When the petition was served the respondent was still living in adultery, and doubtless part of his earnings was being expend' ed on the woman with whom he was living.' Whether that was still the position the Court did not know, but, after all, his wife" had the' first claim on him, and she \vas • more, or less m destitute circumstances. She could not earn enough to keep herself, and at the present moment, property, she had: wa's- almost a liability:.-on ■ her. , He thought he must make some, order, but; at the present time he did not.think itwould be fair to make an order f.or the payment, of £lla -week. -, ; . His Honour made an order for the payment of 10s a week by the respondent, the first payment to be made on September 6 next, and the respondent was-also'ordered to pay three guineas costs. Liberty was reserved to either party to apply for cancellation or variation of tho order. .'