Tony Bennett writes

Sevenoaks, 1st May 2002

 
First many thanks to those who accompanied me to Court today - and to the many of you who sent kind good wishes by e-mail - all much appreciated. Special thanks to Paul Rippingham who travelled 50 miles because the prosecution wouldn't accept his evidence - only to ask him just one inconsequential question. Special thanks to John Gardner, Research Officer of BWMA, who quite apart from his extensive background work on the Traffic Signs Regulations and his excellent website for BWMA, managed to help out my defence team by finding one or two vital documents in his well-organised file that they couldn't find.

The judge after adjourning at 3pm returned at 4.15pm to tell us that though he was 'beginning to form an opinion' on the case, he wouldn't have time to make a 'final decision' and give his reasons. So the case was adjourned a second time, to 10am on 22nd May at Maidstone Magistrates Court.

Two points of interest :
First, the judge seemed singularly unwilling to accept the terms 'illegal' and 'unlawful' that we were using about the metric distance signs. He was only prepared to concede they were 'unauthorised' or 'not permitted'. It all seemed to come down to semantics, until we produced (once again with John Gardner's help) a letter dated 1999 from the head of the Department of Transport's Traffic Signs Policy Branch clearly stating that metric traffic sign were indeed unlawful. The judge tried to dodge this by saying it was 'only one civil servant's opinion'.

The other point of interest came when Michael Shrimpton argued that I should have been prosecuted under Section 131(2) Highways At 1980, rather than under the more general 1968 and 1971 Theft and Criminal Damage Acts.

He said that a later Act creating a more specific offence (in this case 'pulling down or obliterating' a traffic sign) should be used because a later, more specific Act always (impliedly) repeals an earlier more general one [plus the fact that Sec 131 Highways Act gives the defendant a complete defence if he 'pulls down' or 'obliterates' any sign 'unlawfully placed' on the highway].

Michael went on to adduce no less an authority on this proposition than the esteemed European Court of Justice who had just approved on an E.U.-wide basis the principle of 'implied repeal' (and what better authority could you have than that?). In further support for his argument, Michael cited the 1783 case in which an Englishman faced the death penalty for stealing various animals, including a deer - under an earlier Theft Act. Mercifully for him, his barrister unearthed a later Act of Parliament which had a very specific offence of stealing a deer and a maximum fine of £20 [roughly £3,000 today].

The Court in 1783 unanimously decided that the later Act, carrying a fine, overrode the earlier, more general, Theft Act, imposing the death penalty. As Michael told the Court to laughter: "The defendant was more than usually interested in his Counsel's legal submissions". To which today's judge Michael Kelly said, drily, "But Mr Bennett doesn't face losing his head today".