Supreme Court rules LTA fines above $2,000 unlawful

The Supreme Court of Fiji has granted appeal in favour of Pasifika Enterprise after ruling that Land Transport Authority (LTA) cannot fine anyone over $2000 as is illegal and unlawful.

The company was represented by Roopesh Singh, Arthi Swamy and Anushka Sharma of Patel and Sharma Law of Nadi.

During the judgment yesterday, the judges of the Supreme Court, Justice Terence Arnold, Justice Lowell Goddard and Justice Willam Young made it known to the respondents, (LTA and Attorney-General of Fiji) that the minister cannot make regulations out of the legislation.

Background

The court heard that on March 5, 2019, LTA issued a Traffic Infringement Notice (TIN) to Pasifika Enterprise.

It is alleged that the company had permitted an employee to drive a motor vehicle with a gross load of 34.7 tonnes when the maximum permitted load was 21.4 tonnes

This was contrary to the Land Transport Regulations 2000.

The fixed penalty for this offence as prescribed by the regulations was $13,000, being $1000 per tonne of excess load.

The company paid the fixed penalty under protest.

However, the company filed a civil case against LTA and Authority General Fiji to Court stating the TIN was in breach of Fiji’s Constitution.

Mr Singh and the team argued that the aspects of the regulatory regime are inconsistent with sections 14 (2) and 15 (1) of the Bill of Rights which is found in chapter two of the constitution.

Judgment

The judges stated that even though the petition was lodged a year out of time, they granted an extension of time to appeal based on two reasons.

The first is the requirement that the petitioner pay the fixed penalty of $13,000 within the 90-day period irrespective of any challenge to the TIN was unlawful.

Secondly, the fixed penalty of $13,000 was unlawful to the extent that it exceeded the statutory cap of $2000 in sections 80 (1) and 113 (7) of LTA Act 1998.

Thus, in this overloading fine case the decision in this matter confirms that the person challenging the TIN does not have to go to Court first and only issue a letter of dispute to LTA and LTA needs to take action thereafter.

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