Motor Dealers’ Act Case Dismissed

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31118, 22 July 1966, Page 12

Motor Dealers’ Act Case Dismissed

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, July 21. Mr M. C. Astley, S.M., today dismissed a charge against Abel Motors, Ltd., of failing to keep a record of a transaction in which the firm acted as a dealer. The charge, said Mr Astley, was one of a breach of the Motor-vehicle Dealers’ Act, 1958. Mr P. M. Salmon appeared for the firm which pleaded not guilty at a hearing last month. The Magistrate said the facts were that the firm received from the owner of a motor-car an oral contract to sell the car as a dealer and a commission agent. The firm, he said, had no authority to buy or trade the car but was selling it on commission. The car was kept in the dealer’s yard and at the time of police inspection

there had been no sale, nor any events leading to a sale. The statutory provision referred to a completed transaction in the past tense. A commission agency, said the Magistrate, was pot a transaction until a sale had been affected.

The Magistrate said that the prosecution gave him no information as to why the particulars of the car should be put into the book the moment a car arrived in the dealer’s yard, whether or not it was a commission sale.

When, however, a transaction had been completed and the vehicle disposed of to another party, then one could see the necessity for proper records to be made. Mr Astley said that on this ground the information was dismissed.