Nelson lawyer ends career winning case brought by council over parking tickets

Tony Stallard's technical defence focused on challenging the council’s parking bylaw. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A senior lawyer has ended a long-running career with a win in court over his own parking tickets.

The Nelson City Council has failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Tony Stallard was wrong after he twice failed to pay for parking in a city carpark when the meter nearest him wasn’t working.

Stallard, 71, walked from the Nelson District Court a free man yesterday and is now off to Africa. He told NZME afterwards it was likely his final appearance in a courtroom, as it was time to do other things.

His technical defence focused on challenging the council’s parking bylaw, and finer legal points around how evidence was presented in court.

The council had argued it was a simple matter of him having parked his vehicle and then refusing to pay.

The lengthy decision was delivered yesterday by Justice of the Peace David Whyte, who heard the case in February.

He said the prosecution failed and that in this instance the court was unable to take judicial notice of the council parking bylaw.

Stallard explained that was because the council had failed to provide a formal copy of the bylaw at the hearing.

Nelson lawyer Tony Stallard was taken to court by the city council over two parking infringement notices he got when the parking meter wasn't working. Photo / Supplied

On two separate days in September and October last year, Stallard drove to work, parked in a central Nelson public carpark and when he found the parking meter nearest to where he parked wasn’t working he didn’t pay.

On each occasion, he was issued a $40 infringement fee for “failing to pay by the prescribed method of payment”.

The council then prosecuted and Stallard, a former director of Nelson firm Stallard Law, represented himself in court as a “pensioner”.

The council confirmed at the hearing that the meter in question wasn’t working, but said it was normal procedure to find one that was.

The carpark, Buxton Square, has a three-hour time limit and parking costs $2 an hour.

It’s free to park for the first hour but a car’s registration number still has to be entered into the pay-by-plate system.

On each occasion that Stallard was issued the infringement, he had been parked near his office for about half an hour.

Stallard told NZME outside court in February that he had no issue with paying for parking or paying a fine imposed legitimately, but it was “the arrogance of the approach” that concerned him.

“I was apparently being difficult when I said everything was an issue, and obstructive to want to defend something when their machine was not working.”

Stallard said there was a “huge gap” in terms of what the council was trying to prove and how it would do that.

He then challenged, under cross-examination, the two parking wardens who had issued the infringement notices as to whether they were properly warranted, in terms of being able to enforce the council’s parking bylaw legally.

The wardens’ evidence included that the distance to the next closest meter from where Stallard had parked was about 50 metres and that there were other machines within the carpark he could have used.

Stallard asked that if a machine wasn’t working, was it then council policy to require someone to “wander off and find an alternative”, to which the warden said it was.

He also challenged them on how the meters were monitored, and how the system detected any faults, to which one of the wardens responded that was “above his pay grade” but if a meter was down, the third party contracted to provide them was contacted directly.

In final submissions, Stallard argued with Whyte that no evidence had been presented to support the accuracy of how the parking system operated.

He said the prosecutor could have produced information from the third party contracted to provide the system, but it was “not for me or the court to fill the gaps”.

Whyte said that formal proof of the bylaw was required, and it had been the right of the defendant to insist on this.

“On this occasion, the prosecution had not provided formal proof of the bylaw and the court is unable to take judicial notice of the bylaw.

“Irrespective of the merits of the defence, in the absence of formal proof the prosecution must fail on that point alone,” Whyte said.

A senior council manager, Brent Edwards, told NZME outside court it did not mean the council had to ensure every parking meter was always working.

“No, we just need to bring along the bylaw next time.”

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.