Kelloway busing charges dropped but Crown says inspection station expected to plead guilty

Charges against Kelloway Investments — which lost its contract with the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District last year — were withdrawn, but the Crown says a bus inspection station is expected to plead guilty to charges against it.

• 58 charges withdrawn against owner of busing company Kelloway Investments

"Upon closer review of the file and the evidence in respect of this matter for Kelloway's, the Crown made the determination that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction," Crown prosecutor Jude Hall told CBC News. 

Kelloway Investments is a bus company owned by Jim Kelloway, and his sister Janet Jones owns J.J. Services, which operates an official bus inspection station, or garage.

Both entities, registered to the same address, were charged in connection with 58 allegedly false bus inspections, after Service NL determined several buses failed inspection.

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J.J. Services is charged with falsifying the bus inspections, and Kelloway Investments had been charged with displaying those inspections. 

Hall said Crown policy for any file, whether it's regulatory (like this one, as charges are under the Highway Traffic Act) or criminal, is that charges must be withdrawn if conviction is quite unlikely. 

"In other words end the prosecution against that entity. And in this case, that's what happened," he said. 

Hall did not elaborate on why his office determined there was no reasonable prospect of conviction against Kelloway Investments. 

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However, he said Janet Jones, operating under the trade name of J.J.Services, is still facing those 58 charges. 

Jones runs an official bus inspection station, which "is essentially the garage that has the responsibility for doing the inspection certification of the buses," Hall said. 

That matter "is very much a viable and ongoing prosecution," the Crown attorney said, so charges remain against J.J. Services. 

Hall said her lawyer has indicated they will plead guilty to a number of those charges when the case is back in court Feb. 7. 

"We anticipate that at that time the matter will be concluded."