THE QUEEN v. LI CHAU-CHUEN

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JUDGMENT

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1. The Appellant was convicted by a Magistrate, after trial, of contravening section 11 of the Fixed Penalty Traffic Contraventions Ordinance.

2. The Appellant was summoned as the registered owner of a motor car registration No. CY l016.

3. According to the evidence of a Traffic Warden, this car was parked at a meter at 9.24 a.m. on the 4th of march 1986, when the red flag of the meter was showing, which indicated that the parking time which had been bought had expired.

4. The Traffic Warden testified that he wrote a fixed penalty ticket and placed it under the windscreen wiper of the vehicle. The prosecution produced in evidence the certificate of identity of the registered owner of the motor vehicle, which was in the name of the Defendant. The Defendant did not give evidence, but called his brother, the driver of the vehicle at the material time, to do so.

5. The brother stated that he had parked the vehicle shortly before 9.00, inserted enough money for one hour's parking, and returned to the vehicle at 9.30, when he saw neither a red flag on the meter nor the ticket which the Traffic Warden said he had left under the windscreen wiper.

6. The witness asserted that the Traffic Warden had some grievance against him.

7. The Magistrate accepted the evidence of the Traffic Warden and rejected that of Defendant's brother, finding that when the latter returned to the car at 9.30 the red flag was up and that a parking ticket had been issued by the Traffic Warden.

8. The vehicle licence of CY1016 bears the transaction number 720108, which I take to be the reference number of the Transport Department.

9. The parking ticket which was issued, however, contains the transaction number 730167.

10. Thus the recorded transaction number on the fixed penalty ticket differs from that on the vehicle licence of the vehicle.

11. This, by itself, would have been consistent with the evidence given by the warden, though it might have indicated some degree of carelessness on his part.

12. However, subsequent enquiries have revealed that the transaction number inserted in the fixed penalty ticket is that which appeared on the licence of the same vehicle CY1016 in its 1985 licence.

13. It is impossible to see how the Traffic Warden could have entered this number into the fixed penalty ticket, as he recorded on the spot the particulars of the vehicle which according to him was wrongly occupying the meter space.

14. The suspicion must be that the Traffic Warden did not issue the fixed penalty ticket at the time when he alleges, but filled in some of the particulars after he has returned to the transport office.

15. This must throw sufficient doubt upon his credibility in relation to the other matters as to make the conviction unsafe and I accordingly allow the appeal and quash it.

16. I should say that, in doing so, I wish to suggest no criticism with the -Magistrate, before whom these additional facts were not put and whose finding, on the evidence available to him, could not be said to have been wrong.