faq10
Disclaimer: the author of this website is not a lawyer and this site does not constitute legal advice. All information on this website is of a general nature only.
10. Has anyone been taken to court over this?
Out of the thousands of drivers (perhaps tens of thousands) who have received fines from private parking companies and not paid them, only a relative few are known to have made it to court (less than one percent). And of these select few, even fewer of these cases have actually been won by the parking company (I am only aware of 4 won by the parking compnanies, and they were all in Sydney). The most famous case won by a car parking company was Care Park Pty Ltd v Universal One Communication Pty Limited & Anor [2009] NSWSC 1405 (18 December 2009) in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. It was an unusual case in that the driver didn't deny parking in the car park, and in fact had parked there on 10 different ocassions without obtaining a ticket. The driver also didn't mount a proper defense. So yes, this guy lost. Barrister Sean Hardy says on his legal website where he says that he does not know of any cases in Victoria where the parking company has won - see this link and scroll half way down to where he says: "They have certainly not won any court case in Victoria against anyone who has followed my advice - or otherwise!". (Sean Hardy is a leading Victorian traffic law barrister who hosts a free on-line legal discussion forum).
Disclaimer: the author of this website is not a lawyer and this site does not constitute legal advice
The four companies known to be taking court action against drivers are Australian National Car Parks Pty Ltd, Care Park Pty Ltd, Parking Patrols (aka Ace Parking) and Wilson Parking. ANCP took court action against a number of people in NSW in 2011 and 2012 (see next paragraph) but seem to have stopped that since the NSW RTA prevented ANCP from getting driver's names and addresses. Care Park also seemed to have stopped taking court action in NSW, but they (Care Park) have now started it in Victoria (commencing July 2013) with at least 4 known cases. Ace Parking is known to have taken action against one person as has has Wilson Parking.
Australian National Car Parks have taken a small number of people to court in Burwood and Bankstown courts and the Downing Centre in central Sydney. I followed the cases in Burwood court for some months, and found that in all except for three of the cases whilst I was monitoring, either ANCP dropped the case, or the magistrate had dimsissed it. A good example of a case that was dropped in Burwood court is Andrew Borodin's case which was shown on A Current Affair on 3rd June 2010. Notably, on 02/08/2010 in case nbr 201000183091 at Burwood Court, ANCP was ordered by the court to pay costs to Thi Thu Thanh Nguyen.