Not sufficiently clear legal basis to uphold parking ticket

Case no. 106/2019 and no. BS-29361/2019-HJR
Orders made on 18 June 2020

The City of Copenhagen, Parking Centre
vs.
Forenede Danske Motorejere (Federation of Danish Motorists) acting for A

and

The City of Copenhagen, Parking Centre
vs.
Forenede Danske Motorejere acting for B

The cases concerned the issue of whether the City of Copenhagen was entitled to uphold a parking ticket issued to a driver who had entered the car registration number wrongly at a parking pay station, and where the parties agreed that the driver had paid for the time parked. In the first case, A had missed one digit, and in the other, B had entered an extra digit.

The parties agreed that A and B had both paid for the time parked, and that no vehicles with the wrong registration numbers existed. The Supreme Court noted on this basis that there was no risk of abuse, including that another driver had parked his or her vehicle in the same area and had taken advantage of the time paid for.

The Supreme Court held that, in these circumstances, Section 6 of the Danish Order on Parking on Public Roads did not constitute sufficiently clear legal basis for the City of Copenhagen to uphold the parking ticket against neither A nor B.

In both cases, the High Court had reached the same conclusion.