SUPREME COURT.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 13, 15 June 1874, Page 3

SUPREME COURT.

Feidat, June 12. [Before his Honor Mr Justice Gresson.”! APPEAL PROM JUSTICES OP PEACE ACT, 1867

This was an appeal instituted by the Crown Prosecutor, under direction of the Attorney-General, against the determination of Mr C. C. Bowen, Resident Magistrate at Christchurch, in a case in which the Queen, by William Willis, sergeant of police, was complainant, and William Alcroft and Alexander M‘Kenzie, defendants.

The following was the case stated by the Resident Magistrate for the opinion of the Court above:—

The information alleged that the said William Alcroft and Alexander McKenzie were on the second day of January, 1874, at Christchurch, in the colony aforesaid, drunk whilst in charge of an engine on the Lyttleton and Christchurch railway, contrary to the form of the Statute in that case made and provided. The defendants pleaded “ not guilty,” and after hearing the parties and the evidence adduced by them, I did on the fifteenth day of January, 1874, dismiss the said information. The (Crown solicitor for the Canterbury district of the said colony on behalf of the Crown, and under the direction of her Majesty’s Attorney-General for the said colony, alleging that the Crown was dissatisfied with my determination in this proceeding as being erroneous at point of law, did within fourteen days thereafter —to wit on the twenty-sixth day of January, 1874, apply in writing to me to state and sign a case setting forth the facts and grounds of such determination for the opinion thereon of this Honorable Court, and did, before the stating of this case, deposit in the hands of the Clerk of the Resident Magistrate’s Court the sum of twenty pounds, with a condition to prosecute this appeal with effect and without delay, and to submit to the judgment of this Honorable Court, and pay such costs as may be awarded by the same, and thereupon, in pursuance of the said Act in such case made and provided, I state the following case ; It was proved upon the hearing that the defendants were drunk as alleged, but I determined to dismiss the information, on the grounds that I had no jurisdiction to convict or punish. The defendants appeared on a summons to answer the charge of having committed an offence made punishable under the provisions of clause 8 of the Railway Offenders’ Act, 1865, which runs as follows : « It shall be lawful for any railway officer or agent, or for any special or common constable, and all such persons as they may call to their assistance, to seize and detain any engine-driver, waggon-driver, guard, porter, servant, or other person employed upon any railway, or in repairing and maintaining the works of any railway, who shall be found drunk whilst so employed upon any railway, or who shall commit any offence against any of the regulations or by-laws affecting such railway made by due authority of law, or who shall wilfully, maliciously, or negligently do any act, or shall be guilty of any omission of duty, whereby the life or limb of any person passing along or being upon any railway or the works thereof respectively, shall be or might be injured or endangered, or whereby the passage of any engine, carriage, or train shall be or might be obstructed or impeded, and to convey such engine-driver, guard, porter, servant, or other person so offending, or any person counselling, aiding or assisting in such offence, with all convenient despatch before any two or more Justices of the Peace without any other warrant or authority than this Act, to be dealt with according to law ; and every person so offending as aforesaid, and every person counselling, aiding, or assisting therein shall, upon conviction before such justices (upon a complaint in writing) in the discretion of such justices be imprisoned with or without hard labor for any term not exceeding six months ; or shall in the like discretion forfeit any sum not exceeding fifty pounds,and in default of payment thereof shall be imprisoned with or without hard labor for such period not exceeding six

months, as such justices shall appoint, unless the penalty shall be sooner paid.”_ I cannot take the words “ such justices ” to mean other than those before whom an offender seized and detained as provided has been conveyed, and it is only to “ such justices ” that the power has been given by this clause to inflict a very serious punishment.

The Resident Magistrates Act, 1867, section vi, provides that “ Every Resident Magistrate though sitting alone shall have all such powers unless otherwise specially provided as now, are, or hereafter may be exercised by two Justices of the Peace”; but the. provision does not affect the question of jurisdiction in this case. Clause vi of the Railway Offences Act may be read “ to convey such engine driver, &c., before a Resident Magistrate ; and every person so offending shall, upon conviction before ” such Resident Magistrate, that is the Resident Magistrate before whom he may have been conveyed on apprehension. The question for the opinion of the Court is—Whether my said determination was erroneous in point of law. Chas. C. Bowen, Resident Magistrate,

Mr Duncan appeared for the Crown. After hearing argument his Honor decided that the power conferred by the Railway Offences Act, 1865, of taking the offending person before two Justices of the Peace without warrant for conviction, did not interfere with or restrict the jurisdiction of two Justices of the Peace or a Resident Magistrate to convict upon a complaint in writing for a breach of the statute, therefore the Court would hold that the judgment of the Resident Magistrate in dismissing the complaint for want of jurisdiction was erroneous. Order accordingly.