Moral maze - should I pay my painter's parking ticket?

Section62

Bendy_House said:

In any event, it was the P&D who made the decision to carry on parking even without a permit, so ultimately I think they'd be found at 'fault' here (in a 'challenge the fine in court' scenario). Trying to think of a similar situation; say the customer was responsible for delaying the P&D in some way, and they then exceeded the speed limit on their way to the next job - who would be responsible for the resulting fine? Customer created the awkward situation, but P&D made the decision to break the regs.

If it were a legal situation rather than a moral one then yes, the trader has very limited scope for claiming the cost back from the OP.  About the only thing I can think of is if the trader argues that the OP's advice that leaving a note on the dashboard would be Ok led them to (wrongly) believe that parking enforcement in the area was very relaxed.

Legally, if it is a PCN then the question wouldn't be heard by a court (unless by JR) as it is a civil contravention.  The grounds of appeal are quite strictly limited, and "my customer ran out of permits" won't carry much weight.  If the trader was loading when they were issued with the PCN that could be a different story again.

If the penalty were a FPN or NIP then IMV the trader would be fully responsible as that would imply the offence was for something (e.g. speeding) which is never (usually) allowed, whereas not displaying the required permit is more of an administrative failure (they would have been allowed to park if they had and displayed the appropriate permit).

(INAL)

Schwarzwald

havent read the entire thread, think you should pay.
you ordered his services, you are the one having access to the visitor parking vouchers, you failed to either (i) buy sufficient visitor parking vouchers, or (ii) tried to save some money by asking him to post a note instead of a voucher.

Anyway, think you should pay the ticket, even if not required legally.