In the Irish Courts
| Published date | 01 January 1965 |
| Date | 01 January 1965 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201836502900108 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
In the Irish Courts
COURT
OF
APPEAL
IN
NORTHERN
IRELAND
REASONABLE STREET
TRADING
BY-LAWS
Belfast Corporation v. Daly
THE very great difficulty facing anyone wishing to defend
himself against acharge of contravening aby-law by
the
argument
that
the
by-law is unreasonable is exemplified
by
the
decision of
the
Court
of Appeal of
Northern
Ireland in
Belfast Corporation v. Daly (1963, N.J. 78).
There,
by-laws
made
by
the
Belfast Corporation
under
its statutory powers
for regulating
and
governing street trading provide
that
persons shall
not
carryon
street trading in
the
first fifty-five
feet of any street which joins or leads into any of
the
streets
named
in
the
by-laws. Astreet
trader
who was prosecuted for
an infringement of these by-laws challenged this provision on
the
ground
that
it was unreasonable and, on conviction by
the
magistrate, she applied to
the
Recorder of Belfast.
Her
argument
was,
not
that
she objected to being banned from
the
main
streets or from
that
part
of
the
side-streets where they
enter
the
main street,
but
it was unreasonable
that
she should
be
put
so far up
the
side-streets
that
cars could park between
her
barrow
and
her
prospective customers in
the
main street,
so
that
she
was invisible to them.
The
learned Recorder found (i)
that
street traders
depend
on passing trade from customers who are attracted by
the
sight
and
display of
the
goods; (ii)
that
compliance
with
the
by-law
meant
that
they
were
hidden
from prospective cus-
tomers because of
the
presence of parked cars; (iii)
that
the
limitation imposed on street traders was
not
essential from
the
point
of view of traffic control in
the
majority of
the
streets
affected by
the
by-law.
He
concluded
that
the
effect of
the
by-law was to prohibit rather
than
control street trading
and
that
it operated unfairly
and
unreasonably
upon
asection of
the
community, in
that
street traders were banned from areas
5°
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