A garage owner claimed he was being persecuted by the Government after double yellow lines were painted on the road outside his business and home.

Mark Sousa, who owns Cardoza’s Auto Group on Mission Road, Paget, and lives next door, said he received no notice of the new road markings, which prohibit parking or waiting at any time.

He now plans to sue Lieutenant-Colonel David Burch, the Minister of Public Works, for contempt of court for an alleged breach of a 2015 undertaking given to the Supreme Court on use of the road.

Mr Sousa, who hit the headlines after footage of a verbal clash he had with Colonel Burch was posted on social media, has been locked in a dispute with neighbours about parked cars outside his business for years.

He claimed recent actions by the public works ministry had less to do with placating other Mission Road residents and more to do with an attempt to shut his business.

Mr Sousa said: “This is not about the road. This is about getting rid of the garage. They are not doing all this work for three votes in a safe One Bermuda Alliance seat.”

Mr Sousa bought Cardoza’s in the 1980s in the belief that Mission Road was not a public highway and that he would own the road outside the garage. He parked cars on the road like the previous owner, which angered some neighbours.

Craig Cannonier, the One Bermuda Alliance Minister of Public Works at the time, served an abatement notice in an attempt to get the vehicles removed from the roadway in 2015, which Mr Sousa challenged in the courts.

The minister agreed not to enforce the abatement notice while the court case was underway — an undertaking detailed in a Supreme Court order made in March, 2015.

Mr Sousa lost his Supreme Court bid to get the abatement notice overturned in February this year when the Chief Justice concluded that Mission Road was a public highway.

Mr Sousa has appealed the judgment and a hearing at the Court of Appeal is expected to be held in November.

He claimed Colonel Burch ordered Works and Engineering staff to remove vehicles owned by him and his customers from Mission Road after the February judgment, when the minister should have waited until the case was decided.

Mr Sousa added the double yellow lines should not have been painted on the road until the appeal hearing had concluded.

He said he would instruct his lawyer Cameron Hill to launch an action against the minister for contempt and seek compensation for the seized vehicles.

Mr Hill suggested at an earlier court hearing that the Government’s real motive for its pursuit of Mr Sousa was to develop land on South Shore behind the garage.

Mr Sousa repeated the claim yesterday and alleged the plan was to force him to close his business and use Mission Road for access to the development site — but he admitted he had no evidence to prove it.

He said that would explain why the Department of Health had ordered him to reduce the hours his paint shop was open under the Clean Air Act and why the Government ended a lease he held on a patch of public land on Mission Road several years ago.

Mr Sousa added: “All they are doing is applying pressure from many corners.

“This started about parking and it has ballooned. It’s about the rights of an individual.”

The Ministry of Public Works did not respond to a comment by press time.