LIQUOR BY TRICK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 138, 8 December 1938, Page 24

LIQUOR BY TRICK

MAORI SUPPLIED

LICENSEE LIABLE

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

HAMILTON, December 7,

The liability of a hotel licensee who supplies liquor to a Native in a proclaimed area, following receipt of a telephoned order under an assumed European name, wan defined by Mr. S. L. Paterson, S.M., in a reserved judgment given in the Hamilton Police Court The defendant was iSdward Henry Cucksey, licensee of the Te Awamutu Hotel. He was charged in the Kawhia Police Court in September with supplying liquor to a Native in a proclaimed area for consumption off licensed premises. Mr. S. S. Preston appeared for j the defendant, who pleaded not guilty, j

The Magistrate said the evidence showed that on May 21, 1938, a three-quarter-caste Maori, Charlie Pikia, living at Kawhia, rang up the Te Awamutu Hotel and ordered a five-gallon keg of beer to be sent out to L. Batt, a farmer who lived a short distance off the main road near Kawhia. Batt had given no authority for this to be done and had no knowjedge of it.

A five-gallon keg of beer, addressed "L. Batt, Kawhia," wr.s placed on the

Kawhia service car by one of the defendant's employees, and was put off by the service-car driver at Batt's corner. Pikia and another Maori. Barney Porima, were at the corner when the car arrived. They picked up the keg after the car had gone and took it to Pikia's home. Pikia later paid the service-car driver for the beer, and said the payment was from Batt.

The Magistrate said the issue raised in the prosecution was one of considerable importance to licensees carrying on business in or adjacent to a proclaimed area. The fact that the licensee was the victim of fraud on the part of the Native ordering the liquor did. not relieve him from liability if the liquor was, in fact, supplied to a Native.

Proof of want of knowledge, or even of the entire absence of neglect or moral blame, said the Magistrate, did not exculpate a person charged with an offence if he had in fact done that which the statute prohibited.

Mr. Paterson said he was satisfied that Pikia's voice and accent could not have been mistaken for those of a European over the telephone, and that that fact should have placed the barman on his guard.

Concluding, Mr. Paterson said the police were not asking for a heavy penalty, being rather desirous of establishing the principle involved.

The defendant was convicted and fined £1.

Referring to a charge against Herbert James Meredith, the service-car driver, the Magistrate said that, as Meredith did not deliver the liquor to the Natives, but left it at the side of the road, where he was accustomed to leave Batt's goods, he must be acquitted. The information against him was dismissed.