On December 23, Police Cowt, Mr. G.
(Magistrate) gave his decision in the proceedings brought by the Shanghai Municipal.—Council against the Central Garage No., of Jinkee Road, for alleged infringement of the building by-laws. The infringement complained of was that defendants had erected in their Hongkong Road garage certain wooden stalls, in the centre of the ground floor, without having first obtained a permit, and this matter was made the subject of four summonses.
Mr. Langley Smith appeared for the Municipal Council, and Mr. R. N. Macleod for defendants.
His Worship said:—The Shanghai Municipal Council have brought four charges against the Central Garage Company Ld., three under Rules 2, 17, and 27, respectively of the Building Rules_ made under authority of Land Regulation 30, and the fourth under By-Law.33, one of the recently amended By-Laws. All these charges arise out of the construction by the Company of certain wooden partitions in their garage in Hongkong Road. The facts of the case are few and not in dispute, viz., that the partitions were made by the Company, that it is at present in occupation of the garage and that Messrs. Probst Hanbury & Ca., Ld., are the owners of the property, the question to be decided being whether by the construction of these partitions the Company are guilty of the charges laid. I will first deal with the three charges made under the building rules. Mr. Macleod, counsel for the Company, took the preliminary point, as he was entitled to do, on the wording of the charges under Rules 2 and 17 that the Company did not build the garage, and as to that under Rule 27 that the partitions could not be termed a "new building" to which alone these rules apply. He did not press this point for he relied on the contention that nowhere in the rules was the case of partitions dealt with and that therefore the Company could not be charged with the offences in question; he went so far as to state that even if the partitions had appeared on the original plans the Council would have had no power to refuse a permit for the construction of the garage. This contention goes to the root of the matter and the case for the Council stands or falls on its accuracy. I have, considered carefully the argument of Mr. Langley Smith, counsel for the Council, that too narrow a meaning should not be read into the
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