NSW road authority ordered to pay up after its push for Damorange to receive heavier fines for speeding offences failed.
The New South Wales road authority has been ordered to pay the court costs of Damorange after its appeal against a fine handed to the trucking company for speeding offences flopped.
The Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) launched the appeal earlier this year on the basis the $50,000 fine the Local Court issued to the Victorian-based firm was “manifestly inadequate” and that the magistrate erred in his ruling.
Supreme Court judge Robert Beech-Jones last month dismissed the action and has now ordered the RMS to foot the bill for court costs.
“In these circumstances, there is no proper outcome other than to order the plaintiff [RMS] to pay the defendant’s costs of the proceedings. I so order,” he says.
In its appeal, the RMS argued the fine was at the lower end of the maximum penalty that could be issued and did not reflect the seriousness of the offences.
However, Beech-Jones ruled that the department’s belief the fine was inadequate did not provide a valid ground for appeal.
“Submissions which are couched in terms of his Honour failing to have “due or any regard” or only attaching “little weight” to a particular matter do no assert legal error,” Beech-Jones ruled at the time.
“The presiding Magistrate either acted on a wrong legal principle or he did not. At least so far as this ground is concerned, I am not satisfied that his Honour did.”
The RMS also took issue with the magistrate for dealing with the more than 200 speeding offences as a first offence.
It argued, and Beech-Jones accepted, that when cases of multiple offences were concerned, the first one was treated as a first offence and the rest were treated as second and subsequent offences when determining penalties.
However, Beech-Jones still rejected the appeal because the RMS was responsible for causing the magistrate to err.
During Local Court proceedings, the RMS told the ruling magistrate “even though there is more than one offence, you don’t treat them as subsequent offences because they are all being deal with at the one time”.
The Local Court magistrate heeded the RMS’s advice when ruling on the penalty.
“In this case, there was a legal error in his Honour’s sentence…However, in circumstances where the only basis for intervention was solely caused by a statement made by the prosecutor to the court below, I consider that, as a matter of discretion, this Court should not intervene at the prosecutor’s behest,” Beech-Jones ruled.
Damorange received the fine in the wake of a compliance blitz against the trucking industry in 2012.
During legal proceedings, Damorange director Lawrence Splatt told the Local Court the company was taking action to comply with speed requirements and that it had suffered significant harm to its reputation as a result of the publicity the speeding incidents caused.
Damorange had no record of prior convictions, and the ruling magistrate found that the company recognised the seriousness of the offences and had “taken appropriate steps in the Court’s view to address the obvious problems that existed when these offences occurred”.