Brambles Holdings Ltd v Pilkington [1972] HCA 6

High Court of Australia Barwick C.J. Menzies, Windeyer, Walsh and Gibbs JJ Brambles Holdings Ltd v Pilkington [1972] HCA 6

ORDER Appeal allowed with costs. Conviction set aside, and complaint dismissed.

The Court delivered the following judgment:—

Barwick C.J., Menzies, Windeyer, Walsh and Gibbs JJ

The appellant was charged before a stipendiary magistrate sitting as a Court of Petty Sessions at Devonport with having unlawfully used as a public vehicle a motor vehicle of stated registration number and a trailer of another registration number for the carriage of goods for reward on a public street at Devonport, the said vehicles not being licensed to be used as public vehicles of that class under the provisions of the Traffic Act 1925 Tas.. The elements of the statutory offence were made out but the appellant raised the defence that his use of the vehicles at the time in question was in carrying goods in the course of inter-State trade and commerce.

The vehicle and trailer at the time charged were being used in the Devonport railway goods yard having carried a rail container belonging to the Tasmanian Government Railways loaded with a quantity of particle board sold under the name "Trudek" from Wesley Vale mills to the railway yard in Devonport. The appellant had a contract with the mill to transport "Trudek" throughout Australia and in Tasmania. The contract was not put in evidence but a witness, the north-west coast manager for the appellant, gave evidence as to the effect of the operation of the contract by saying—"We load the particle board at the mill and then deliver it to wherever it is consigned to at the other end." It was said that the rail container containing the particular parcel of "Trudek" was railed to Hobart consigned to an agent of the appellant whose duty it was to receive the container to transfer its contents into a container suitable for the receipt by the shipping company being either a container owned by the appellant or a container owned by the shipping company, and then to cause that container to be loaded onto the "Seaway Queen" to be carried to Sydney.