Unfortunately, the sole representative of beleaguered motorists up and down the land has lost his brave battle to overturn a parking fine in the Supreme Court. Our champion had sought to argue that £85 was an ‘excessive’ amount to be charged for overstaying the allotted time in a car park. The Supreme Court – by a majority of six to one – dismissed the appeal, saying that the charge was a ‘legitimate deterrent’ to prevent motorists from staying beyond the time they had paid for. In a typical example of intellectual dishonesty however, whilst the Justices agreed that such charges should not be ‘excessive’ or ‘disproportionate’, it refused to define what this meant! It is however likely that it will be difficult if not impossible for motorists to now argue that any charge around that sum is unfair.
The Supreme Court’s other main finding was that if a motorist is fined more than the car park owner could reasonably be expected to have lost in income, as a result of the overstay, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the fine is unfair. In a way this was an obvious and predictable ruling, as otherwise car park owners would be saddled with the administrative burden of having to collect ‘underpayments’, with the deterrent value of the fine being significantly reduced, if not rendered completely nugatory. The judges more or less removed a future challenge on this ground by ruling in terms that car park fines could not be considered to be unfair under the ‘unfair’ provisions in consumer legislation.
To use the wonderfully arcane language of the Justices, such fines have a ‘useful role to play’. Fair play to them for hearing the case though. That was the highest court in the land ruling on the legitimacy of a parking fine!
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