TEST CASE AT PAEROA.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5473, 11 September 1929, Page 2

TEST CASE AT PAEROA.

SOLICITING PASSENGERS. AN UNUSUAL PROSECUTION. What Sergeant Calwell described as an unusual prosecution came before Mr F. W. Platts, S.M., at the Paeroa Police Court on Monday, when F. E. Crimmins, taxidriver, Paeroa, was charged with entering the premises of the Paeroa railway station f$ the purpose of touting and soliciting persons as passengers for a motor-bus on June 12 and 19, at the time not being licensed by the Railway Department to do so. Sergeant Calwell stated that the stationmaster at Paeroa had been experiencing a little difficulty with various motor-bus drivers, more especially the defendant, trying to induce passengers to leave the train at Paeroa and go by bus to Waihi or Thames. It was known that two had done so and then applied for refunds on their railway tickets. The prosecution was to show that the practice was illegal, but was not one calling for punishment. The railway and buses were more or less commercial concerns, and at variance with one another as to the number of passengers carried by each.

Mr R. S. Carden, for defendant, who was not in court, admitted the charge as being quite true. Crimmins had perhaps been a little over-zealous. A driver’s job was a rather precarious one, and a lot depended on the number of passengers carried. Defendant was of fine character, courteous to passengers, and well liked. It was not his fault that his owners did not take out a license. It was rarely that a case like this was brought in New Zealand.

In answer to the magistrate Sergeant Calwell said that the stationmaster had warned defendant before for trespassing and for running his bus up and down along the road parallel to the railway line, calling to passengers in some cases by name, which they objected to. Mr Carden submitted that what took place on the road did not count, a with which the magistrate concurred.

The magistrate convicted and fined defendant 20s and 12s costs.