The Police v. Bastings.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 275, 27 May 1897, Page 2

The Police v. Bastings.

j O TEE LAW REGARDING PROHIBITED PERSONS. I

Sitting at the Police Court this morn ing, Mr Carr.w, S.iM , gave judgment in the case of the Police v. Elizabeth Bastings, wbo had been charged with selling beer to James Garden, a prohibited person. His Worship's decision was as follows : — The defendant, wbo is the licensee of the Victoria Hotel, is charged on information with selling liqncr to a prohibited person. It was proved that Mrs Purvis, the defendant's daughter, who at the time had charge of the bar, supplied James Garden, against whom a prohibition order had been made and was then current, with a piut of beer. It is admitted that defendant had notice of the prohibition order. There is evidence for the defence that Mrs Purvis did not know the name of the man she supplied with beer, nor that the man she supplied was a prohibited person. The value of evidence of this class, experience shows, must be estimated with considerable care ; but I know no reason to doubt the evidence in this case. There have been conflict ing decisions in the English courts as to whether menu ret is a necessary element in constituting an offence under certain enactments in the licensing laws. In Cnndy v. Le Cocq (13 Q.B. Div., p. 207), a charge of selling liquor to a drunken person, it was proved that neither the innkeeper nor his servants had uoticfd that the person served was drunk ; but that was held to l>e no answer to the charge, and that the responsibility was cast upon the iunkc n per of ascertaining before ho served him with liquor whether tl|C person was drunk. Following that decision it has been held in this Court that ou proof that a copy of a prohibition order had been served on the holder of a publican's license ho was liable to bo convicted ou proof that he served liquor to the person name! in the order, whether he knew the person he served to be the prohibited person or not, and that the responsibility of ascertaining whether a would-be cusiotuer was a prohibited person rested on the publican. Mr Solomon, for defcudaut iv this case, has argned with considerable force- that a later decision pivon in Sherras v, Do lintzen (Law Reports, 1895, 1 Q.B , 918) is opposed to Cuudy v. Le Cocq, and is more consistent with natural justice The suljstauco of that decision is that on a charge of supplying liquor to a constable while on duty there is no offence committed in the'ribsonce of «i'i ! ty kuowledgu that the constable is ou duty. If that is so, can any reasonable distinction bo drawn between such a case and the present one ? It is a difficult position. Ou the one side there is great hardship that a person should bo convicted of an offence who had no intention to do or reason to think he was doing anything coutrary to law. On the other hand, the enactment to prevent such persons as those against whom prohibition orders are issued from being supplied with liquor is a highly beneficent lav/, but it will bo much moro difficult to enforce if the absence of guilty knowledge is a good defence, and probably lead to less care being exercised as to whom liquor is supplied. The question, howevi-r, is whether there is sufficient similarity between Sherras v. De Rutzeu and the present case that I should act upon the authority of the former case in deciding this informationThe charge in the one case was selling liquor to a constable on duty, the present charge is sollin? liquor to a prohibited person ; and if guilty knowledge is essential in creating an offence in the one case I can see no reason why it should not in the other. Case dis missed, Mr Solomon, wbo appeared for Mrs Bastings, said it had been brought before bis notice, since the case was last before the Court, that Mr Poynton, the Invercargill magistrate, had taken the same view of the law as His Worship bad in the present prosecution.— Dunedin Star.