Milan, 9 June 2024 – Seven days of suspension for 40 cents too much. An illegitimate increase in price punished with a one-week ban. The protagonists of this story are a taxi driver and a customer who got into his white car. According to what emerges from a very recent TAR ruling, at the end of the racethe woman asks to be able to pay with the Pos.
Try the first time, but the transaction fails. Same script for the second attempt, with another card. And so it was the third time, with yet another payment card. At that point, the driver applies a sort of “surcharge” (perhaps due to the time wasted waiting in vain for payment, one can hypothesize).
The final cost goes from 36.60 to 37 euros, with a rounding up of 0.40 euros. The lady immediately reported the incident to the Municipality. And on February 16th the driver was notified of a management decision from the “Innovative Transport Strategies” area: sanction of seven days of suspension of the operation of the taxi service “for having requested an increased payment of 0.40 euros for the fare of 36.60 euros, after three POS payments made by the customer with three different cards had not been successful”.
A behavior that clearly violates article 44 letter f of the Regulation regional airport of the Lombardy region, which prohibits drivers of vehicles in service from asking for sums that are greater or do not comply with those authorized. A behavior punished with a stop from a minimum of 7 to a maximum of 30 days, depending on the severity.
Translated: it comes to the driver in question the minimum sanction has been imposed, probably due to the very modest amount of the disputed sum. In addition, the provision orders the immediate refund of the 40 cents to the customer.
Finished? Not at all. The taxi driver decides to challenge the stop sign of a week at the Administrative Court of Lombardy. Two days ago, the sentence arrived: the judges declared the appeal inadmissible, without even going into the merits of the matter. The reason? The driver’s lawyers they only notified it to the Municipality of Milan, rather than to the Lombardy Region.
As already reiterated in previous pronouncements, the panel chaired by Daniele Dongiovanni explained that “the disciplinary technical commission is to be considered a regional bodygiven that, upon its establishment, the Region is responsible for carrying out the investigation and concluding the procedure relating to the violation of the legislation relating to the methods of carrying out the taxi service in the basin, as well as the requirements and conditions of operation”.
After all, it is the Palazzo Lombardia Council that appoints the members of the body. “Consequently – the judges underline – the activity must be considered referable to the Commission as a whole, as a regional body that expresses a single will and not also to the individual competent bodies”. Conclusion: “The appellant should have notified the appeal to the Lombardy Region and not to the Municipality of Milan”.
