On this day in 1905

The law was quite clear: William Pitman’s boat, Venus, was only licensed to carry 50 passengers. He was caught carrying 80 and ended up in court.

But, Pitman argued, it wasn’t as simple as that. Pitman had been carrying passengers from France to Jersey, not the other way around, in which case he was obliged to comply with French law when casting off. And French law said he could carry 99 passengers – almost twice as many as Jersey allowed. Where they were being dropped off was largely irrelevant.

A cross-border dispute

The issue was so taxing that the court convened a special sitting to decide who was right and, after some skilful arguing from Pitman’s advocate, it determined that French law applied in this case. In carrying 80 passengers, although more than Jersey permitted, he was well below the legal limit for that leg of his journey.

The Harbours Committee disagreed, and referred the matter to the Royal Court, claiming that the judge at the police court, where the case had first been heard, had exceeded his authority. Worse, when the Bailiff was shown Pitman’s license, he spotted that it had been signed not by the Harbour Master, but the Greffier, rendering it invalid. Not only was Pitman forbidden to carry as many passengers as he had done: he wasn’t licensed to carry any at all.

Ultimately, perhaps surprisingly, this actually worked in Pitman’s favour. After the court had retired to consider its verdict, the Greffier announced that as Pitman’s licence wasn’t valid, he couldn’t be prosecuted for having contravened it.

 

...and on this day in 1908

Philippe Simon appeared in court when he refused to pay the labourers he’d employed to dig up his potatoes. They’d worked three days, they told the court when they sued him for their pay, but when he’d heard that some cheaper labourers were on their way from France, he’d told them to stop digging, pack up and go away.

Originally, the local labourers had been asked to work for seven full weeks, not just three days, and the contractor who had engaged them was still having to pay them, even though he himself had not received any money from Philippe Simon.

A case of hearsay?

The case hinged on who said what to whom, and whose memory of those conversations was most reliable. Fortunately for Simon, he was the most credible witness. He swore on oath that he had warned the labourers that the work was only temporary, until the workers he’d booked from France arrived.

The contractor claimed to have no recollection of that, but the fact he could remember other factors that helped his case ultimately counted against him, as it made his memory look unnecessarily selective. The court found in Simon’s favour, and he was free to employ his French labourers without paying the contractor any compensation. For the contractor, it was doubly bad news, as he was ordered to pay not only his workers, but costs, too.