Weighty case won
Page 20
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Lancashire hauliers W Robinson (Bilsborrow) was given an absolute discharge on two overloading offences last week after Commercial Motor reports were produced before Abergele magistrates.
The company admitted a 3.3% gross overload, and overloading the compensating axles by just over 6% on a rigid vehicle that had been carrying bricks from Carnarfon. Defending, John Backhouse said that the company had been operating since 1961 with no previous convictions, and it had been unable to explain the present offences.
He produced a list of brick weights, supplied by Butterleys, which he said had been found to be accurate in the past. That list showed that the number of bricks on the load in question ought not to have re stilted in an overload. Backhouse also produced weight certificates from two past occa sions when vehicles had been checked at the Airiley Top dynamic axle-weigher.
These certificates showed that similar loads had been within the permitted weights. He said that the only possible explanation was that the bricks had absorbed water while beim stored in the open.
Backhouse showed the court reports in Commercial Motor cd cases involving E Dowse & Son, at Leeds Crown Court; E J Meeks at Nottingham; P & 0 Roadways at Stoke Crown Court; and Transport & Warehousing Facilities, at Alfreton magistrates.
In all these cases the defendants had been given absolute discharges on the grounds that they were morally blameless for what were absolute offences.
He argued that the present case was parallel to that of E Dowse & Son, in which the Crown Court judge had quashed overloading fines because he had been satisfied that there was no moral responsibility or negligence on the part of the company, which, like Robinson, was a reputable firm of hauliers with no previous convictions.