Capstone

Capstone: the Alder Park scooter

Alder Park Council is an invented local authority. By-law 7 of the Alder Park by-laws reads: ‘No vehicle may be driven in the Park. Cycles may be ridden only on the marked paths.’ Mr Idris Calder is sixty-eight and has a condition of the hip that makes walking difficult. He uses an electric mobility scooter with a top speed of six kilometres an hour. On a Saturday in October a park warden fined him 150 for ‘driving a vehicle on the grass’. Mr Calder says that he rode the scooter on the marked path to the bench by the lake, and that he got off and walked beside it for the last twenty metres on the grass, because the path was blocked by a children’s event. The warden’s note says only: ‘Scooter driven on grass, about 15:10.’ A photograph taken by the warden shows the scooter on the grass; no one is on it. The council’s committee minutes from the year the by-law was passed record that the aim was ‘to keep cars and motorbikes out of the Park and to protect the grass’. Two decisions may matter. In Pike v Harlow Borough, an appeal court binding in your system held that a motorised wheelchair used by a disabled person was not a ‘vehicle’ under a similar by-law, because the by-law’s purpose was to exclude traffic. In Council of Westmere v Odum, a trial court in another district held that an electric scooter hired for fun was a ‘vehicle’. The council’s lawyer has now written to you. You act for Mr Calder in an appeal against the fine. Everything is invented. Use the tools of the course to plan, and write a short plan for the case.

General education on legal reasoning and argument, using invented cases, by-laws and people. It states common principles and does not describe any one country’s law, rules of evidence or professional conduct rules, which differ and change. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace the instruction of a law school or a supervising lawyer.