The Swedish Transport Agency is appealing the district court’s decision to let Tesla pick up license plates from the manufacturer.
The authority believes that “the security aspects have not been sufficiently highlighted”.
A week ago, Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Agency and Postnord, after the electric car manufacturer had not received license plates for new cars distributed. Later that day, the Norrköping district court made an interim decision:
Tesla would be allowed to pick up its license plates from the manufacturer.
The decision is now being appealed by the Swedish Transport Agency.
- We believe that the security aspects of a disclosure have not been sufficiently clarified and therefore want to be tested whether the district court’s examination has been correct. The decision is also unclear because it does not say anything about how the district court actually intended how Tesla should collect its license plates, says Anna Berggrund, department director at the Swedish Transport Agency.
Hmm.
That – picking up packages and delivering them themselves – might solve things for Tesla, but I’m not at all sure that this is a general solution for other entities that might be in a similar position in the future.
It’s practical for Tesla to pick up and deliver them themselves. But it might not be for some other company or person.
Let’s say that, for some reason, a package delivery company wants to leverage its monopoly position. I can imagine a number of reasons. For example, a particular recipient or sender might be willing and able to pay more than they actually are. By using price discrimination and its monopoly position, a delivery company could convert consumer surplus into producer surplus: charge parties more who really badly need to send or receive packages and can afford to do so.
So there is at least incentive to do this: get one end to sign an exclusivity agreement, then extract concessions from other parties. If EU antitrust law permits for this, I would think that a logistics company could pull the same stunt, but going after smaller companies.
I think that in the US, common carrier status applies to at least some logistics companies, which disallows them from doing this.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/what-does-the-common-carrier-obligation-mean-for-us-railroads
According to the definition for common carrier obligation, “a rail carrier providing transportation or service subject to the jurisdiction of the [Surface Transportation Board] under this part shall provide the transportation or service on reasonable request.”
In other words, the common carrier obligation binds railroads to transport any freight that has been properly tendered on reasonable terms and conditions, according to the Association of American Railroads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
A common carrier…is distinguished from a contract carrier, which is a carrier that transports goods for only a certain number of clients and that can refuse to transport goods for anyone else, and from a private carrier. A common carrier holds itself out to provide service to the general public without discrimination (to meet the needs of the regulator’s quasi-judicial role of impartiality toward the public’s interest) for the “public convenience and necessity.”
Public airlines, railroads, bus lines, taxicab companies, phone companies, internet service providers,[5] cruise ships, motor carriers (i.e., canal operating companies, trucking companies), and other freight companies generally operate as common carriers.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/202
(a) Charges, services, etc.
It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage.
WP says that the closest analog to the common carrier in common-law countries like the US and the UK is the public carrier in civil law countries like most of Europe. But I can’t find material indicating whether it’s normal for a public carrier to also have an obligation not to discriminate, as a common carrier does.
I do assume that PostNord is indeed a public carrier, as they appear to offer services to the general public.
Anyway, to reiterate, my point is: suppose instead of Tesla, it were a much smaller company being targeted that couldn’t deliver the packages itself. It seems like those companies would still be vulnerable if public carriers are permitted to do this sort of thing, discriminate by party with whom they are doing business. The solution that Tesla went with and the court upheld – that Tesla had the right to do delivery itself – solved the problem for Tesla, because Tesla was large enough that that is an option…but it seems like it’d leave the problem for many other companies and individuals, and I’m not sure that that’s desirable.
If one wanted to avoid that, I’d think that requiring PostNord not to discriminate among packages by sender/recipient would be a preferable solution, rather than simply establishing that Tesla has the right to do delivery itself.
And that seems like it’d be an EU law question, a matter for EU competition law, rather than a question of Swedish law, as competition is an exclusive EU competency.
I think the issue is the actual postal workers. PostNord as a company isn’t refusing anything. They’re just saying that they can’t force their workers to deliver mail to a company that the unions are in conflict with.
However, they are appealing the judgement.
They’re appealing it because it’s too vague to be off any use. The Post has a very specific procedure in place for delivering plates. The judge told them “let Tesla get their own” but nothing about how that’s supposed to work. Who from Tesla? Does the Tesla janitor qualify? Who at Post should be responsible for releasing the plates to them? Should this apply to all other recipients going forward?
Nobody at Post is going to do things half-assed and then risk taking the fall for it. This is going to get passed back to the government by requesting that a new official procedure be devised that implements the court’s decision, mark my words. Which will take however long it will take but it definitely won’t be fast.
It’s like ordering a transport company to deliver meat unrefrigerated. Never gonna happen. Even if a judge were to order that, the company would appeal because they have contracts and regulations to cover them.
Tesla sued the wrong entity because Post will just say they were contracted to deliver plates in a very exacting manner and they can do it like that or can’t do it at all. Ultimately they will take themselves out of the line of fire and it will be between Tesla and the government.
Tesla lucked out by getting a short-sighted judge on this initial ruling but it will be overturned on appeal and Post will be cleared. I look forward to them suing the Swedish state next because it’s genuinely going to be very interesting.
I think you’re mixing up cases and agencies?
Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Agency (STA) AND PostNord.
The ruling against the STA is to allow them to pick up the plates at the STA instead of the STA via their exclusivity contract giving them to PostNord. It has nothing to do with PostNord as it lets Tesla go to the STA directly. The STA is appealing this interim decision.
There is no ruling with PostNord yet, the judge gave them 3 days to give an initial argument to decide if he would even make an interim ruling prior to the full case being heard. I imagine Tesla is going to have a really hard time with the PostNord case.
I doubt that that creates a loophole to bypass regulations for companies, else one could just arrange to have workers do whatever the company isn’t officially doing. What I would expect happens is that a company is liable for the actions of the company, regardless of the internal reason – like, if an employee won’t act in conformance with the regulations that a company is subject to and it’s resulting in the company not conforming and being fined, I’d expect that they’d need to fire the employee or do whatever is necessary to return to compliance. If, oh, a water company isn’t doing required water quality tests, a regulator isn’t going to accept the company saying “well, we did tell George to do it, but he just doesn’t like doing so”.
Isn’t that just limiting the workers right to strike?
I mean, they can strike, but in that scenario, either:
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It’s going to cause the company to violate regulations and the company might get fined.
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They’d have to strike in a way that doesn’t throw the company into violation (like, refuse to deliver anything at all).
It’s going to cause the company to violate regulations and the company might get fined.
Which is why PostNord is arguing Force Majure. They can’t be liable for something they don’t have any power over.
Seem that the workers are doing the first but also Postnord arguing that they can’t be held liable because they can’t interfere with the workers right to strike.
The second point seems weird to me. Why would you want to affect companies where the union and the company agree? Jack is being mean to me so I’m going to fight back by punching both Jack and Jill in the face, even though she’s always been nice
Let’s see where this ends up. Last word is not said in this saga.
Postnord arguing that they can’t be held liable because they can’t interfere with the workers right to strike.
Seems completely understandable.
What’s weird is how legal is it to do a strike on a company you don’t even work
A sympathy strike? Perfectly legal in the Nordics. Not so in the UK I’m told.
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You are completely missing the point. The company doesn’t refuse anything. It’s the Union Workers who refuse it for the specific reason of Tesla not wanting to negotiate a Union contract.
And I’ve read this enough times here to think that that some people are astroturfing here with this bullshit claim shifting the topic about “Workers strike in Solidarity” to “Postal Companies discriminate against poor companies for arbitrary reasons and that’s dangerous”
