Taxi drivers lose their case over value of plates

The former president of the National Taxi Drivers Union yesterday said he hoped the High Court would consider the debts suffered by taxi drivers who lost their challenge yesterday when it decides the costs involved in the case.

The three drivers claimed the value of their taxi plates was wiped out overnight when the sector was deregulated in 2000. The case has been dismissed by the High Court.

Alphonsus Muldoon and Vincent Malone had sued the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, and Dublin City Council, while Thomas Kelly sued the minister and Ennis Town Council.

They were test cases for more than 1,100 similar claims by taxi drivers.

Mr Justice Michael Peart yesterday said the claims made by all three men must be dismissed.

Tommy Gorman, the former president of the National Taxi Drivers Union, said the drivers were still paying off loans taken out to buy taxi plates that were now worthless.

“If you consider the man in Ennis, who borrowed through his home £120,000 to buy a taxi plate in that year, he lost his home, he lost his marriage and he has nothing now. He’s still paying back on an asset that’s worthless and I’m sure all those considerations will be taken in when it comes to cost,” Mr Gorman said.

The three sought damages and declaratory orders claiming that because the minister and/or the local authorities permitted a licensing regime to operate as it did over so many years, they suffered immediate and significant losses as a result of overnight deregulation and liberalisation of the market.

Mr Muldoon and Mr Kelly claimed the minister and the State acted beyond his powers by delegating the role of deciding on the number of licences to the local authorities and in breach of their right to earn a livelihood and their constitutional rights.

Mr Muldoon also sought declarations including that Dublin City Council acted contrary to competition law and that the defendants, or some of them, had been unjustly enriched as a result of the regulatory regime operated and/or approved by them.

Mr Justice Peart said the need for more taxis increased as Dublin developed but this need was never met between 1978 and 2000.

Taxi owners and their representatives resisted any significant increase in the number of licences and lobbied effectively to that end. Queuing for a taxi, particularly at night time, was the norm and waiting times became longer and longer, he said. While the industry always appeared to come out on top in negotiations about more licences, something had to be done.

At the same time there was a secondary market in the sale of taxi plates which “contained within them the seeds of destruction” when new regulations, introduced by the government on January 13, 2000, provided that a person could pay €5,000 for a new licence.

Before the change, plates were changing hands for substantial sums, up to €100,000 in some cases, he said.

The judge was completely satisfied it was within the minister’s powers to delegate regulatory powers to local authorities. He found the regulations did not interfere, “much less unjustly attack”, the taxi drivers’ right to earn a livelihood. “They could continue to earn their livelihood,” he said.

It was therefore not necessary for him to address the issue of whether they were entitled to recover damages for breach of a constitutional right.

The judge said that, in his view, they were not in a position to bring a claim for breach of statutory duty by the defendants. Each of the taxi men entered the market voluntarily, in the knowledge, to be implied to them if necessary, that the regulatory regime could change, he said. They also knew there was a risk involved that in buying their licences they would not hold their value, he said.

Mr Justice Peart rejected the claim the minister was in breach of his duties to them when he introduced the new rules. The minister’s duty was to regulate public service vehicles in the public interest, he said.

There was nothing in the original 1961 regulations to indicate there was imposition of a duty to regulate in a way that does not interfere with the interests of individual licence holders, he said.

In relation to competition law, he said they had sought to establish that licensing by the councils met the criteria for an economic activity, at least in principle, but were “overlooking or ignoring, as they must for their argument, the non-commercial reality of that activity”.

The case comes back before Mr Justice Peart next month to deal with the question of costs.