Position of Teetotal Magistrates.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 281, 3 June 1896, Page 2

Position of Teetotal Magistrates.

The Lord Chief Justice (says an English paper of April 13th) has directed that almost immediately after the reassembling of the Law Courts this week a Court, consisting of himself and Mr Justice Grantbam sball be constituted. It will proceed to the hearing of the case of Bird v. the Licensing Justices of Sheffield, which, to publicans and the liquor trade generally, will almost rival in importance the celebrated decision in Sbarpe v. Wakefield, where it was held that there was no vested interest in publicans' licenses. In the present case, the point for the decision of the Judges, shortly stated, is whether Magistrates having pecuniary interest in teetotal causes or enterprises are in the same legal position as those con cerned in the liquor trade, and are, therefore, debarred from sitting as Licensing Justices by the existing law. The question arises out of the refusal of the local Licensing Magistrates to grant a beer and wine license to a restaurant at Sheffield, some of the Justices being shareholders in a rival temperance hotel. Last November Mr Edmundson, as counsel for the restaurant keeper, obtained leave to argue the question before a special Court for Crown cases. He, led by Mr Memorran, Q.C,, will contend that the order refusing the license was bad in law, and ought to be quashed, on the ground that the financial interest of these gentlemen in a rival teetotal business was such as "to create a reasonable apprehension of bias in their minds." The Magistrates have filed affidavits raising novel anH important questions of licensing law, which will be read on the hearing.