In England and Wales new laws will shortly come into effect but in Scotland the courts have already determined that clamping a vehicle can amount to extortion.


Wheel clamping.

A motorist parked his car on private property in Scotland where a notice stated that unauthorised vehicles which were parked there were liable to be wheel clamped and that a charge of £45 would be made for their release. The High Court of Justiciary in Black v Carmichael [1992] The Times, 25 June, ruled that the levying of a sum for the release of the vehicles constituted extortion (described by the court as the use of means, such as threats, which were not related to the use of legal process or the unauthorised detention of a debtor's person or property to obtain the payment of a debt; such threats, it added, would have amounted to extortion even if the owner of the land had been entitled to be paid a charge for parking). The court also held that wheel clamping constituted theft by the appropriation of the vehicle, which had been deliberate. This decision suggests that the Scottish courts may develop a different approach to unofficial wheel clamping from that which appears to be developing in the English courts. The position in the latter is reviewed by C Tibber at 8 Wilkinson's Road Traffic Law Bulletin 53.

The only downside of this are the ignoramuses who use the disabled only bays in shopping centres knowing fine well nothing can happen to them