COLOURS OF TAXIS

Taranaki Daily News, 1 June 1927, Page 9

COLOURS OF TAXIS

DISPUTE IN WELLINGTON. SUPREME COURT PROCEEDINGS. Wellington, May 30. An application by Black and White Cabs. Limited, for an injunction to restrain four Wellington proprietors of taxicab services from painting and making up their cars in a manner similar to that in which the Black and White cabs are painted so that the public are deceived into thinking that they belong to that company, was made in the Supreme Court to-day before Mr. Justice Alpers. The plaintiff company set out that since April 1, 1925, it had carried on the business of a passenger taxicab service ,in and around Wellington, using cars whose pattern was distinctive and unique. About November of last year, it was claimed, defendants, with intent to appropriate plaintiff’s business and reputation, began to use cabs so constructed and painted as to imitate plaintiff’s taxis and to make the public believe that they were owned by the plaintiff. Complaints made had been disregarded. ~Tlie four defendants in the action were Barnard McEneany, James Lancelot Hagan, Fred William Neal and Ed.ward Sandford. Their statements of defence were all of similar nature, denying that their cabs were so painted and designed as to render them indistinguishable from those of the plaintiff. MeEjieany also claimed that the action had been brought in an endeavour to secure a monopoly of black and white as colours in the painting of motor-ears carrying passengers for hire throughout New Zealand.

Argument was heard to-day, and the ease was not concluded.