A taxi-driver took four young women passengers on a full return journey to where he had picked them up because one of them told him to take a left, a court heard yesterday.
Mr Edward Coyne, Clonard Road, Crumlin, Dublin, denied breaching public service vehicle regulations by refusing to take the women to their destination. He was fined €200 and ordered to pay the passengers €592 expenses.
Dublin District Court heard the women hired his cab to take them from Christchurch to Rathfarnham at around 4 a.m. on September 7th, 2002. Initially they chatted amiably with the driver and as they approached Rathfarnham, the three women in the rear seat took out coins to pay their share of the trip. Mr Coyne told them he didn't want change "only notes". The women initially thought he was joking and as he drove on, the front seat passenger, Ms Helena Byrne, told him to keep left in order to make a turn at the Yellow House pub in Rathfarnham.
"He told me not to tell him what to do. He said you may be a cheeky bitch to your mammy and daddy at home, but you will not be in my car." He then told them he would bring them back "to where I found you". Ms Byrne thought he was joking but when he turned and got as far as Terenure, she suggested he could at least let her out and take the other girls to their homes.
"He ignored me and turned up the radio and took us all the way back to Christchurch." Ms Byrne, and two of the three other passengers who gave evidence, denied she (Byrne) had been rolling down the front passenger window and shouting at people in the street. They also denied Ms Byrne fiddled with the radio and with the meter.
Mr Coyne told the court that he warned Ms Byrne three times to stop winding down the window before telling them he would bring them back to where he picked them up.
He said he did not want to bring them to a Garda station, as required under the taxi regulations if passengers are causing difficulties, because he did not want to embarrass the women in the back.
Judge Cormac Dunne said Mr Coyne had "in a sense lost it that night" and even if Ms Byrne had done what he alleged, it would not justify his reaction.