Two items in the Law Reports have caught my eye
this week. One was the eminently sensible ruling by a Divisional Court that it cannot be construed as an offence to drive over a white line at a bend of a road. No doubt if an accident occurs a driver who is over the line is presumptively in the wrong ; but on a clear road the white line does not bar half the highway to drivers. The other case displayed legal diction at its best. What was in question was whether an ice-cream seller was permitted to stop now and then or had to keep moving—just that. The Times' report read : " Informations were preferred by Mr. Wilfred Townend, the Town Clerk of Fulham, the respondent, under section 3o of the London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1927 (17 and 18 Geo. V, c. xxii), against Frank Taylor and Henry Saunders, the respective appellants, charging them with having respectively, in the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham, unlaw- fully sold a certain article or thing—namely, ice-cream, flow a receptacle occupying a stationary position at a place on the public carriage-way of Clancarty Road and Filmer Road respectively, without licences under the Act from the borough council authorising them so to do."
That vehicle containing the ice-cream bore the familiar legend " Stop Me and Buy One," which would constitute a flagrant challenge to the law if the Fulham Borough Council's view of the law was correct. But it turns out not to be.
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