GAMBLING ON A RAILWAY TRAIN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2411, 17 March 1915, Page 6

GAMBLING ON A RAILWAY TRAIN

HEAVY FINES IMPOSED. <By Telesra-ph.—Special Correspondent,) Napier, March 16. At the Napier Magistrate's Court today Mr. S. E. M'Carthy delivered his reserved decision in the case heard yesterday when Patrick Lynch, Leslie Short, Victor Fuller, and Oliver Burke were charged with gambling on a railway train. The point Taised on the previous day v/as as to whether a railway carriage was a publio place within the meaning of the Act. In giving his decision the Magistrate said: "Railway carriages are places where the public may assemble, and the public may reasonably be said to be m habit of assembling in a railway carriage, just as they do in a church, a concert Toom. a theatre, a racecourse, a sports ground or a publio reserve. It was, however, argued that the words 'all places wheroever the publio may assemble' must be construed ejusdem generis with the words 'road, street, footway, court, alley, open place, and thoroughfare of every sort.' Now the rule of ejusdem generis is not. an absolute rule; it is a rule of construction merely, and must bend before the intention of the Legislature expressed or implied. Clearly the words 'all places wherever the public may assemble' were intended as an extension of the class of places previously detailed, and were quite obviously intended to include racecourses, sports grounds, places where boxing exI hibitions are being held, and indeed any place where it is the custom for people to assemble. To limit 'public places' within the meaning of Section-8, to roads, public squares, rights-of-way, and so on, would bo to exclude the operation of the section over places which it was obviously intended to regulate. Moreover, to so limit the defini--1 tion would be to over-ride the case 1 Walters v. E, Lowry, . the . deciding Judge having decided that Section 8 of the Act of 1881, which is almost on all fours with Section. 8 of the Act of 1908, was intended to apply to places of publio resort to which people'bad access by the sufferance of the owners." Fuller and Short were each fined £50, and ' Burke and Lynch each £30; and no time was allowed in which to pay tho fines.