POPLA statement on their position re Beavis and Supreme Court Appeal

HO87

Insofar as your response is concerned are you criticising the message or the messenger(s)?

If the former then are you suggesting that the word "fine" is an acceptable alternative for what is a unilaterally imposed charge intended to enrich one or other of the parties - hardly what a "fine" is intended to be - or are you simply criticising the way in which that message is delivered?

I do not condone bullying - if indeed that is what has happened. However, when it comes to matters of law sadly pedantry is the norm. Fail to appreciate that words can have very precise meanings that do not necessarily accord with common usage and one can come badly unstuck.

MothballsWallet

POPLA's statement should have been:

"We, POPLA, have decided that, following Beavis, we will redouble our efforts to kiss the feet of the PPC bosses."

enfield_freddy

or we will do an ATOS , and sit on our thumbs until we (the staff) are "re employed" by a new company later this year , at which point we will then act like the IPC , and not give a hoot about the laws of the land.


we were loosing too many cases , BPA members are leaving in there droves , so if in doubt , change the rules

stator

Captain_Krunch wrote: »

So why stay the cases at POPLA or the courts if the new ruling will have no relevance those cases?

They may not have created new law. They may have simply overturned the previous verdict and restored the original law.

HO87

stator wrote: »

They may not have created new law.

They have. That is what establishing new precedent is. As I described above contract law is based almost exclusively on judge-made law.

stator wrote: »

They may have simply overturned the previous verdict and restored the original law.

No, not really but they might just have established even more exotic or extravagant definitions. I'm not sure that anyone is terribly clear about what the CoA was saying (as a whole) and maybe even they are not clear?

fisherjim

Quentin wrote: »

You never seen the bullying way all mentions of the word "fine" are dealt with by the semantic pedants here?

People come on here asking for help, they need to get into the correct frame of mind about how to deal with PPC's (who are the real bullies) and thinking that they issue "fines" just supports the fears that the uninitiated bring with them.
Maybe some are a bit blunt, but it crops up time and time again, and it needs to be pointed out that PPC's are not authorities or as important as they want you to believe, exposing the "fine" myth is an important part of that process.;)

stator

HO87 wrote: »

They have. That is what establishing new precedent is. As I described above contract law is based almost exclusively on judge-made law.

I was saying that if the decision went the other way they could have overturned the original Beavis judgement and this would have restored the original law as it was when the parking infringement happened.
Therefore there would have been no change in law and POPLA could have gone back to granting appeals on GPEOL

TDA

stator wrote: »

He is saying that the judges created new law with their decision at the court of appeals. The laws they created didn't exist with any parking claim before their judgement, so one couldn't be expected to be held to it.

But the court didn't 'create' new law. They asserted that the correct interpretation of the authorities was that a penalty is defined by whether the amount was 'extravagant and unconscionable', not by whether the predominant purpose was to deter. The latter is merely indicative, not determinative, of a penalty.

The theoretical position when a precedent-setting court makes a ruling is that they are ruling on what the law has always been, not what it now is. This is why such decisions have retrospective effect, to the extent that someone who received a charge on the same facts as in Beavis prior to the case, would still be liable under the CoA ruling to pay the amount due.

Now, obviously the reality is somewhat different from the theoretical position, in that neither party can be truly sure what the law "always has been" until a ruling by a court of authority has been made. However, the fact remains that there is a difference between creating new law, and interpreting or extending existing law.

The idea that POPLA would be subject to judicial review were it to apply the CoA's ruling to parking events that occurred before the Beavis case was heard, on the basis indicated by marktheshark is laughable.

It's far from clear that the nature of the power exercised by POPLA in such cases would even make it amenable to judicial review in the first place.

Mike172

So no more GPEOL?

TDA

Mike172 wrote: »

So no more GPEOL?

From my reading of the case, if the Supreme Court uphold the CoA ruling then the true test for a penalty will be whether it is 'extravagant or unconscionable'.

Whether it is a genuine pre-estimate of loss will still be a relevant factor to consider, and may often be a decisive one. However, it would not be decisive in certain situations, such as where there are overriding policy considerations at play (such as the judges found there were in Beavis).