“Car: This should be restored because it is used for transport for my son. The car has exemption tax. My son has a head injury and unfortunately falls over most days. I have to go to him immediately to sort him out. We live 6 miles from him and worry that without a car that an ambulance might be called and eventually due to inconvenience he might be denied the opportunity to live independently”
“ 20……………………. There must, therefore, be something more than a failure on the part of the applicant to invoke condemnation proceedings before the Tribunal is empowered to question the legality of the forfeiture. 22. It is, in my judgment, clear from that passage that in the run of the mill cases where there has been a failure to give a paragraph 3 notice invoking the condemnation proceedings the deeming provisions will operate against the applicant in any subsequent appeal to the Tribunal . The Tribunal’s function, therefore, is analogous to a sentencing court once a defendant has been convicted. No matter that the defendant still protests his innocence of the charge against him, the functioning of the sentencing court is to accept mitigation but not to question the original conviction. 23. …. So the relevant questions will always be, first, could the applicant have raised the question of lawfulness of forfeiture in other proceedings and, if the answer to that question is yes, why did he not do so. In light of his reasons for not raising the matter of condemnation proceedings the Tribunal can then answer the question should he have done so and if they answer that question ‘yes’ then it will be, in most cases, an abuse of process for him to raise the question before the Tribunal.”
“63. …….. I would not have been prepared to condemn the commissioners’ policy had it been one that was applied to those who were using their cars for commercial smuggling, giving that phrase the meaning that it naturally bears of smuggling goods in order to sell them at a profit. Those who deliberately use their cars to further fraudulent commercial ventures in the knowledge that if they are caught their cars will be rendered liable to forfeiture cannot reasonably be heard to complain if they lose their vehicles. Nor does it seem to me that, in such circumstances, the value of the car used need be taken into consideration. Those circumstances will normally take place beyond the threshold where that factor can carry any significant weight in the balance. Cases of exceptional hardship must always, of course, be given due consideration.”