Amorsingh v Collins

JurisdictionSt Lucia
JudgeLewis, C.J.,Bishop, J.
Judgment Date10 December 1968
Neutral CitationLC 1968 HC 31
Docket NumberCriminal Appeal No. 3 of 1968
CourtHigh Court (Saint Lucia)
Date10 December 1968

West Indies Associated States Supreme Court. (High Court)

Bishop and Lewis, JJ.A.

Criminal Appeal No. 3 of 1968

Amorsingh
and
Collins
Appearances:

I. D'Auverpe for appellant.

J.B.D. Renwick (Attorney General) for respondent.

Evidence - Motor vehicle accident — Appeal against conviction — Motor vehicle offence

The appellant appealed against the decision of a magistrate in which he convicted the appellant of the offence of driving without due care and attention under section 49 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Ordinance, Cap. 134. On the question whether the decision was based on the evidence.

Held: There was evidence on which the magistrate could have based his findings. Appeal dismissed.

Lewis, C.J.
1

This is an appeal against the decision of the magistrate for the Second District Court sitting at Vieux-Fort on the 21 st of October 1968, in which he convicted the appellant of the offence of driving without due care and attention under section 49 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Ordinance Chapter 134.

2

The appellant was driving a motor omnibus, which was described in the evidence as a van, from Micoud to Vieux-Fort, and he had reached the district known as Aupicon on the Vieux-Fort/Micoud road when he saw a motor truck approaching from the opposite direction. Between them was the Aupicon bridge.

3

The driver of the truck, Joseph Joseph, said in evidence that he was thirty feet from the bridge when he first saw the van; he tried to apply his brakes, the pitch was wet, the truck skidded towards the bridge, but he was able to stop, and the van, coming at a speed of about thirty-five to forty miles per hour rushed on to the bridge and knocked the side of his truck.

4

Subsequently he said that the truck was about fifty feet away when he first saw it and he was thirty feet away from the bridge. There was a distance of eighty feet: between them.

5

His evidence was substantially supported by his brother Patrick Joseph, a chauffeur who was driving with him in the front seat if the truck. A police corporal also gave evidence for the prosecution. Some of his measurements as recorded do not make a great deal of sense but he does say that the bridge was 16'6” wide and the truck 7'4” and the van 7'6” wide. If they were both driving carefully they could just squeeze through on this bridge.

6

It was also in evidence that the driver Joseph Joseph had previously pleaded guilty and had been convicted of driving without due care and attention in respect of this collision.

7

The appellant in his evidence put the blame on Joseph. He said that he came along the curve which you meet before you can see the Aupicon bridge in front of you, and he was about twenty feet from the bridge, and the truck was about fifty feet from the other end of the bridge —...

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